CJ WATER TEMPS AND FISHING THREAD!

[easytobeme03]

We all understand Lowell and hope that everyone else who is still able will do so as well

[INTIMIDATOR]

Am finished with the deletes at OGF; hope that everyone understands why was doing it. Am STILL very proud of what WE as a group did; will treasure the "Friendships" that have made and what we accomplished. Hopefully soon the only posts on the thread will be Sir Intimidators ! (Talk about `poetic justice`...) And learn to keep your lead foot OFF that gas pedal !

Dang Lowell,
That almost sounded like an obituary...this thread will be bigger, better, and smarter! Slab will keep the different years separated in the Archive for us, so we can go back in and get info easily!
And the "Lords Of Darkness" will call upon you once again!
Tell Fritz where we are....I miss his words of wisdom from the "Book of the Polecat"!

WHEN IS THE OFFICIAL "Let the water out of CJ, date"...does it start Oct 1st???

["G"]

You guys need to put all that stuff behind you and move forward....its time to go fishing.

[crappiemax]

You guys need to put all that stuff behind you and move forward....its time to go fishing.

You got that right

[INTIMIDATOR]

Hey murn....just barely dip the nose and tail!

[crappiemax]

Hey murn....just barely dip the nose and tail!

You added that color? That's pretty cool...what did you use?

[INTIMIDATOR]

You added that color? That's pretty cool...what did you use?

CS QUICK COAT WORM DYE with UV BLAST....I don't know if any Sponsors sell it, but I get it from Jansnetcraft.com
The swimmers we use are White on top and have a clear bottom with silver glitter (called Sight Flash)....they take color well....some plastics, like Z Man, are very hard to dye, these are not.
The Crappie this year at CJ have been very picky....it seems one week they want Natural Colors and the next they want "Gummie" colors, with no seemingly correlation to light...this variation of Electric Chicken has really done well. The Walleye like the all pink/orange combo better!

[crappiemax]

Wow Jan's...I'll have to look into that.
One thing about summer crappie...I usually don't find them so color sensitive but I do find using a heavier jig or a roadrunner to help maintain depth can make a big difference.

[INTIMIDATOR]

Wow Jan's...I'll have to look into that.
One thing about summer crappie...I usually don't find them so color sensitive but I do find using a heavier jig or a roadrunner to help maintain depth can make a big difference.

The swimmers I use don't float like normal plastics, normally the weight of jighead I use is only dependent on wind!....1/16th-no wind, 1/8th-low wind, 1/4-windy.

[crappiemax]

The swimmers I use don't float like normal plastics, normally the weight of jighead I use is only dependent on wind!....1/16th-no wind, 1/8th-low wind, 1/4-windy.

As you know, lots of variables come into play when choosing a head size. Wind is one example and speed/depth control is another. Especially with deeper fish a heavier head will allow a faster retrieve while maintaining a deeper presentation. With a lighter head a much, much slower speed would need to be used to maintain that same depth. I have seen where just a slight adjustment in (faster/slower, deeper/shallower) presentation could mean a significant increase/decrease in catch vs. hits ratio.
Last weekend we fished a school that was 9-12' deep in 14-16 FOW. Most of the time we had very little (if any) wind to contend with. We started with 1/16 oz heads. We got bit but it was pretty slow. Even though we were getting hits we weren't hooking many, maybe 1 out of 10 or 15. In a short time we switched to a slightly heavier 3/32oz head. Action immediately picked up and we were hooking about 60% of our hits. We switched plastics around too from stingers to swimbaits to tubes. Eventually orange/chart tubes won out.
More than anything I suspect the larger heads allowed us to give the faster action the fish wanted in the deeper water.
I will say we even tried some 1/8 oz heads to see if we could improve our success even more but it seemed to have more of a negative effect so we switched back to the 3/32.