Guntersville yesterday

[crappieseeker]

I posted this on the Bama forum too for my friends who do not look at the main page often.

WOW what a day. My friend and fellow crappie.com member BobD text me Friday and wanted to know if I wanted to go catch some crappie. Now what kind of question is that to ask a die hard crappie guy ha ha. It had been over a year and probably close to 2 years since me and Bob have fished together. We decided to start off the day doing a little casting and then finish up with some long line trolling. We were successful with both techniques.

Here is a run down of our adventure. We started off real early and was hoping to get a spot we knew we could do well at. Someone beat us to that spot. We decided not to crowd the area we thought they were going to fish and we got in on the back side of them. Another boat came along shortly and cut off the path that we had been picking up some fish and wedged up close to the other boat and at an angle that cut Bob off from where he had been picking up some fish. Needless to say they caught some decent fish from that spot. We caught a few fish on minnows there but most of the fish came casting 1/16 jigs with blue ice. We could have caught even more there I think if we could have been able to fish the area Bob had been catching some at. I think we ended up doing pretty well there before we decided to move and do some long line trolling.

It took us a while to figure out the pattern and color they wanted trolling. However when we did we caught plenty of fish. It was a consistent bite when we figured them out. Bob is a little more experienced than I am with the trolling thing and he managed to do a little better than me with it but we both managed our fair share of fish. They key was running a double jig set up on each pole in water that was 15 to 25 feet deep. The fish were mainly suspended in open water following balls of baitfish. A lot of them were also relating to some cover. I am now very thankful for purchasing my Humminbird 998SI. That thing gives picture perfect images of things. We did not need it to catch fish because we would have caught some anyway. However it did show us the cover very well so that we could relate our path back through those areas and pick up fish. We could watch the screen and tell by what we saw when we were more than likely to pick up a fish and it worked. The color for trolling that worked the best was blue and chartreuse southern pro curly tail. I think our jigs were probably running 10 to 12 foot right above the fish and cover.

I think we ended the day having caught 81 that were big enough to keep. Bob took some of those fish home. We left with the fish still biting consistently. We could have easily caught over 100 keepers but we decided to call it a day. We had several slabs and I am interested to know if Bob weighed the big fish he caught. I think it went over 3 pounds. I stuck one that I wish I could have got in that I think could have possibly been a 3 pounder. I have very limited experience long line trolling. I have only done it a time or two in the past over on Woods Res in Tennessee. I done it once on Gunt before with Bob and James and the fish were not really there good that day. I say for my second time doing it on Guntersville it turned out pretty good. Long line trolling is fun and rather easy if you can find the fish and the pattern.


I had a great day of fun. Thanks for the fellowship and good memories Bob. We will definitely have to do it again.

PS, to the guy in the Tracker boat who cut off the bank fisherman, shame on you.

[catman]

congrats, sounds like a great day.

[crappieseeker]

thanks catman, I had a great time for sure

[shipahoy41]

Great report! Did you check out the bridge area by the mill plant? Just sayin......