Mark Twain Crappie

[Dale D]

just wondering if there is any info on Mark Twain fishing right now. Are the crappie spawning now up there and how long do they spawn there compared to the LOZ. I want to take the family fishing.

[PointerMan]

I plan on trying Mark Twain this weekend too, probably on Sunday. I'd love nothing more than to get my kids into some keeper crappie. They are finally old enough to take the fish off the hook themselves, so I might even get the chance to fish too! :D

From what I've heard it sounds like the fish are spotty on the banks but they're getting more plentiful. This should be a good weekend if the weather settles down...

Best of luck!

[jolle]

Fished up there in North Fork on Saturday and brought home 32 among 3 of us. They definitely weren't biting like we'd hoped, but we did better than most we talked to. What we did catch was right up in the junk (brush, grass, bushes) that have been flooded, in 2' or less of water. It was frustrating fishing since EVERY time you stuck the hook in the water you hung on something, but that's where they were. We got all of ours in the back of one cove . . . it was producing enough to keep us from leaving, and we eventually ran out of time.

Our day was shortened due to several mishaps . . . one guy didn't hear his alarm and the other guy got a flat tire on his way to my house. Then when we got there, the motor wouldn't start. It cranked and cranked but wouldn't fire. After 20 minutes of messing with it and thinking it had a bad coil (no fire from spark plugs), I went to take the key out and noticed the kill switch string was pulled loose!! >>:[

Why didn't I notice it earlier?? Who knows, I checked every other possible thing, but I'll sure remember that one next time. It was just one of those days. We lost 1.5-2 hours of fishing due to all the mishaps, but I can't complain with the result. Several other people at the cleaning station at Stoutsville had 10 fish or so. Two guys came and dumped a bucket of already cleaned fish there, and said they caught their limits right on the bank in 2 hours in Little Indian. We probably should have looked around a little more, but most coves had 3+ boats in them, so we just stuck where we were alone and getting fish consistently.

Average was 10" with several 12" females. Eggs were very small still, and thus most females bellies were not showing much. I hope to get back up there soon.

[CrappieCoz]

You're right they are in the bushes. We fished close to the bushes and caught a couple until my son's dog decided he needed to cool off 4 different times. We caught some spotty fish. We had a couple of locals come by and watched them. They used their jigging poles right next to trees an the bank. I was the only one with a jigging pole and I caught more fish than my son and his buddy. I was able to pull the jig to the tip and maneuver into the bush and drop the jig right on the fish.
When I cleaned the fish their eggs seemed hard and a dirty red. Not a bright yellow with blood veins. Some one told me that they are not ready yet but I thought it was pass and they were in the process of ridding themselves of the eggs that they could not lay because of the water depth changes and temp. Any Ideas?

[jolle]

Yes, the jigging poles were worth their weight in gold. You had to go straight vertical, and even then you hooked up junk on every single drop. But, if there was a fish there, they would hit it immediately, usually on the way down before it hit bottom. So, they were aggressive, but you had to touch their nose with it or no luck. And since they were in such shallow water, being able to reach 12' out made it much easier to get to them. The interesting thing was that when I thought we'd be scaring them by pulling up brush or using the trolling motor, we'd catch one right next to the boat after dropping in a bush or hitting the motor.

[drfishjd]

Don't forget to try weedless jigs. They work great for dipping trees and brush. Lots of people who don't use them say they won't hook fish, but I don't think that's true. If you use braid line for dipping, it makes life easier too - unless a gale is blowing.

[perchplucker]

We where up there saturday too. We fished Lick Creek and it was hard catching. I ended up with 14 and my husband 7. They were close to the bank and only fished about 18" deep. We were using minners and nibbles. My husband did catch 2 of his on a jig that I had tied up for him. No one that we saw was doing any good. I csught most of mine in 1 cove also. They were next to dead weeds sticking out of the water. Hard to fish the cedars when they are completely under water. Don't know if we will make the trip back up this spring or not. I bet the wind was a real pain there sunday.

[jolle]

I do use braid for most of my crappie fishing so I don't lose hooks. It's great on the long poles for added sensitivity, but is a pain when it tangles on the end b/c it is so limp. Then you have to pull 12' feet of rod back through the boat to undo it.

My buddies were saying their bites were light and they thought it was grass . . . I said put some spiderwire on and you'll know a bite. Most of mine were sharp pops and were no mistake . . . if a fish was there he bit almost immediately when you dropped it in the water. A few times it just stopped and I didn't feel it, but other than that they were aggressive.

I've also done fine with weedless jigs, but didn't have any in the box that day.

[C N]

The wind was horrendous yesterday at Mark Twain. It was the only day we could go, though, so we went. I think we caught 9 keepers. (We don't keep anything below 9.5''.) I'm not that familiar with the lake so can't tell you where we were. We tried jigs, jigs tipped with minnows, jigs with crappie nibbles, cork and jig, cork and minnow..... We did best with just the plain old jigs and casting and retrieving. No one we saw was doing much of anything. We caught a couple in about 8 feet of water but most were up close to the bank in the weeds. Very shallow.

The wind got so bad that we finally gave up around 3 p.m. Pontoon/tritoons catch too much wind for crappie fishing on windy days.

[fishin]

I just want to hop in here and say thank you to the two guys who pulled me, my wife plus our two little ones in Saturday after my outboard decided to take the day off.

Fishing was OK, less than two feet of water in Dry Fork water temp was about 65*.