Dead Minnow fishing

[Crappieorbust]

Hey everyone. I typically fish at night and then only when the opportunity arises, this particular trip happened on Labor Day weekend. I had bought minnows that morning and did a fair job of keeping them alive during the day. Kept in the basement in a 5 gal bucket with finershiner added to the water and an aerator. How ever they all died on the way to the lake. ( a problem I have since resolved) since I was already there and opportunities not being as frequent as I would like I put in anyway. Got to my preferred spot,set up and put a dead minnow on a hook. I start out with about 5 or 6 rods, didn’t really expect much but after full dark and a reasonable amount of time I started catching some fish. Then I noticed I was catching most of them on 1 rod. Not being the brightest bulb in the box I wondered why. Allow me to back up for a minute, I was fishing in about 20 some odd feet of water close to a dead fall and using slip bobbers fishing 9 to 12 feet deep which usually produces for me here. Then on one retrieve I noticed the rod catching the fish had the line stop set only at about 3 to 4 ft. So not being too bright but not too dense to adjust, I did so. I brought home 30, my limit. Some of the biggest overall I have taken, I still caught plenty of small ones. All on dead minnows, 3 to 4 feet deep in 20 ft of water. The water surface temp was 86 degrees. Opened my eyes to a few things. Hope this helps someone

[SpeckledSlab]

​Deleted by poster.

[Redge]

Always, pays to be observant!
Nice way to adapt.


Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com

["G"]

Welcome aboard.
I am going to move this to the Main board where more people will see it.

[scrat]

Great information. Nice catch. Thanks for sharing it. I will be looking forward to seeing more of your fishing reports and pictures.

[trypman1]

I enjoyed your post, I have a habit of fishing under Crappie, also.

[Ketchn]

nice report and welcome to the forum , dead minnows ,especially the ones that are cut in half are about as deadly a bait as there EVER was created to ketch crappie for sure . many moons ago when I went after crappie I even killed them just to cut them up .
as far as them being up high in the water column that is something I see quite often and more so after sunset for sure .
and btw ,show us them there fisheez please

[Crappieorbust]

[Crappieorbust]

Not from the night I was talking about, no pics that night but this is from a week or two later

[Crappieorbust]

Have to have pics this way now because at work without a pic it’s just another fish story.