Originally Posted by
GRIZZ
You rarely find anyone spider rigging, trolling, using cranks in the north. Not too many of the longer poles here either. People rarely use rods over 7 ft. Road runners not as popular though they are being sold in the stores. They just don't catch northern crappies as well as in the south.
Boats are different. More multi species style boats in the north. In the south most crappie fishing boats are shallower platform boats designed like bass boats.
Crappie fishing in the south numbers wise is closer to bass fishing. You typically have a good day when you get 20-40 fish, a good day in the north is 100-300 fish.
NY has plenty of whites. There is a vague line somewhere where the whites lessen and it starts to be black only territory. I think its roughly the eastern boarder between the US and Canada by Buffalo, and the mid western states that are north of that typically have mainly blacks.
In general fish grow slower in the northern states, so the average fish is smaller, but very large fish do grow up here, it just takes 5 years longer for them to get that big, so there are fewer of them. More predators in the north that eat even large crappies.
More natural lakes in the north with more weeds as opposed to man made cover. Man made reservoirs in the south are deeper with less cover.
There are fewer crappie only anglers in the north with less emphasis on conservation and stocking efforts up here. They tend to concentrate more on walleyes, muskies, bass, trout up here in the stocking efforts, which irritates me, because in particular Chautauqua lake has suffered greatly from the lack of attention crappies get from the DEC. Its used to be arguably one of the best all around crappie lakes in the north, and for the sheer numbers of large fish it had to be ranked right up there as one of the best. I remember many many days where I could go out and easily get 300 fish with most being 1-2 lbs with some over 2lbs and occasional 3's. Now most fish are barely legal with very rare fish reaching the large sizes of the past.
We dont spider rig up here cause of the 2 pole limit so that just dont work.... I troll tube jigs all the time up on Black lake with pretty good success.. And the statement of you getting 300 fish a day is over doing it and besides sounds like you might have contributed to the problem that there are so few fish in the lake you talk about... Getting 300+ Callies is allot of fish being pulled from a lake... I remember the days of no limit on size or catch and did my fair share of keeping ... But thats what we have to live with now i guess..
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