Anyone See the Raghorn Show on Crappie Fishing at Monroe?

[Moose1am]

I watched the Saturday Morning Raghorn fishing program last week and saw them catching 7" and 8" Black and White Crappie on Monroe.

Do the crappie at Monroe all run that small?

Does Monroe not have a shad population to feed the crappie?

Is there that much pressure at Monroe that all the big crappie are gone?

I know that in the KY/TN area of Kentucky Lake they have put in a 10" size limit for crappie. Now Kentucky Lake is much larger than Patoka or Monroe put together so if they think that Kentucky Lake gets too much fishing pressure and the Kentucky and the Tennessee DNR both think that a 10" size limit is required then maybe Indiana needs to think about this too.

I normally catch and release those 8" size crappie when I fish at Patoka. I once caught them all day long but they were so small that I didn't think that they would filet very well. So normally I released fish that size. I grew up catching slabs at Kentucky Lake and was used to throwing small crappie back and only keep the one pound or larger fish. But I only fished Kentucky Lake in the past and have not fished it that much in the last 15 years.

These days I fish at Otter Pit, and Blue Grass Pit in the new Blue Grass Fish and Wildlife Area in Southern IN near Elberfield IN. This pit receives a lot of fishing pressure but most of the fishermen are targetting Largemouth Bass. They have an 18" and two fish limit for LM Bass on Blue Grass and Loon pit and a 14" size limit on Otter Pit. All these pits are full of small crappie and I personally have seen and held two crappie that both went about 1.3 lbs and were 14" in length. Now that is a about a 5 or 6 year old fish I believe. But those are few and far between on these pits according to the DNR creel surveys.

I would love to see larger crappie available to us in the future.

[Patrick Vowell]

hey moose

Solomon and Walters weighed in close to 18 lbs. in the spring on monroe... They are there... Another guy on my prostaff said he use to slay 1-2 lb fish before the pads died off.. THe only time the new pads produce he said is when the spawn is on..

[Moose1am]

There were a lot of views on this thread by only one guy responded with some input. I don't know what to do to get more people to talk about crappie fishing in Indiana. I guess all the hoosiers are too busy fishing to come in here and share information or they don't have access to the internet.

I could not understand why the guys didn't fnd the slabs. I guess they are on a limited budget and could not fish too many days and had to shoot the production in only one afternoon. Not many guides can GUARANTEE that they will catch slabs for you on any given day. Sometimes those big slabs are elusive or hard to find. That I can understand as I am having a hard time finding the big crappie.

All my crappie that I caught this week were under 10". I am lucky to catch a 9" fish at Blue Grass Fish and Wildlife Area. But there are good numbers of small crappie to be had. Not many people fish exclusively for crappie at Blue Grass. There are some nice catfish at Blue Grass Pit and I landed a 2lb cat fish yesterday. I was lucky that I switched over to my bait casting rod and reel with the heavier line. I was fishing with a KY lake crappie rig that is made with heavy line. I must be at least 17lb test line. So I got the only rod in my boat out that had 10lb test line. All the other spinning reels are loaded with 6lb and 4lb test lines. I didn't want to lose the double hooked KY Lake Crappie rig in the brush pile so I went for the heavier rod and reel and line. I figured if I got hung up I could pull the line by hand and pull the hook off. Sometimes the soft gold hooks that are thin will straighten out if you pull on them hard enought. As soon as I let the line go down to the bottom with two fresh minnows on the hooks the catfish hit. I had set the rod down for a second to do something else and I looked back and saw the rod bending over. At first I thought I was hung up and then I remembered that I was anchored and not moving so it had to be a big fish. I was using a short 5.5ft rod that is one of my worm rods and I had a good fight bringing the catfish aboard. I thought I had caught a wale. LOL

hey moose

Solomon and Walters weighed in close to 18 lbs. in the spring on monroe... They are there... Another guy on my prostaff said he use to slay 1-2 lb fish before the pads died off.. THe only time the new pads produce he said is when the spawn is on..

[Patrick Vowell]

At least you got it in.. I strongly believe a guy can go out and better a 9 to 10 inch fish on the larger reservoirs, especially if he is guiding.. I mean you can't put guys on one and two pound fish all day, and I don't think they expect that. But I think it is crucial to put a 12 to 13 inch fish in the boat.. I try to push my guide trips one way or the other and sometimes even both.. I was guiding a guy on Patoka back in the spring, We had tried a couple of spots to no avail.. We started jigging some stick ups and caught a thirteen and a 11".. I could tell though that he was getting bored, so I took him to a brushpile and we scooped up a 6 to 10 inch fish every time we dropped the line... We even managed to pick up another 11" fish... He was laughing now and he said "this is what I call fishin'"... I took another guy out and we fished up the river and targeted nothing but large fish. We ended up with 9 fish from 10 to 14 inches.
He enjoyed that more than most guys would because he was wanting to be convinced that there were fish larger than 10 " in the lake... He hadn't seen one..I seriously believe that if you are going to put on a fishing show , whoever the guide is better be on his game... I know when I watch a fishing show I want to see some big fish.. Not all day , but a couple are needed to keep my attention.. I look at it as if this is all these guys are catching, I have very little to learn from them ... Unless they are fishing a lake coming up on the trail...LOL :D