8 21 04 Blue Grass Pit Fishing Report

[Moose1am]

Fished Blue Grass Pit today and caught about 20 crappie. They were all white crappie and ranged from 7" to 9" long. These crappie were on the drop off and in 22ft of water. They were hugging the bottom along the drop off and on submerged brush piles. Water temp at the surface was 24 deg C and at 25 ft it was 19 deg C. Winds were gusting to 15 mph and steady at 10 mph out of the North or NorthWest. Air temps were in the mid 80's today with clear skies and lots of sunshine. I fished tightline using Squirmin Squirts White Lighting jigs which are 1.5" long. These are similar to the Southern Pro jigs and look like large Hydras with tentacles. I used 6lb test Berkley Iron Silk like Green in color and a Richard Williams Signature Graphite 7.5 ft crappie pole and a Daiwa Reel with a good tefflon disk drag system. I added a 1/4oz Bass Pro Shop's Finess Drop shot weight to the end of the line. The jig was tied onto the line with a palmar knot and I left about an 12" long tag line that I used to attach the drop shot weight. This lets me feel the bottom with the lead drop shot weight and have the jig 12" off the bottom where the fish are.

Water was stained to dirty today. Blue Grass Pit has a very high Conductivity and the pH of the water is around 8.4 The pit is full of silt and the silt has covered up the underwater vegetation and is blocking it's sunlight and killing the underwater weeds. IMHO. Fish bite well from 12:30 PM until 2:00 PM. By that time my arms were getting tired and I was getting burned. I refused to apply the sunblock today until well into the fishing trip.

I have been told by the DNR guys that there are too many small crappie and they want us to clear out some of the excess. If not for this fact I would be throwing back all the fish under 10". I have seen two big slabs come out of this water but they were both caught using crankbaits.

I fish vertical and slow troll. I set the trolling motor Minkota power to 1 on a 1 to 5 power scale. I estimate that I am going about 0.5 to 0.8 mph. I used a Garmin Vista GPS to make the way points and to measure my speed while trolling. I like to troll until I find some structure on the depth finder and then throw out a marker bouye and then fish the spot throughly until I locate fish. If I don't catch anything in 5 minutes I move onto another spot. I followed the drop offs until I found the school of crappie.

[sacalait steve]

thanks for the report I live in Louisiana but put different techniques from other
states together to try and catch fish here youre indepth report will be tried here.
I know of a couple pits here that sound like this one except for the water temp.