At A Crossroad....Crappies and Gills Pics

You just gotta love it when the crappies are on their way back to the main lake and river channel as the spawn draws to an end, and the blue gills are moving out of the lake and river channel as their spawn draws near. The beauty of this, in this particular place, is that if you catch it at the right time, in a few spots, the two fish are intermixed at a crossroad staging area of stumps, lily pads, and sparse cabbage and coontails, between the winter grounds and spawning areas. What was really cool about the timing today, is that not only were the fish there, but each species seemed to have it's own preference as to where to be, even if it was only a foot or two from the other. The crappies were totally relating to lily pads, and pockets between three or four patches of lilies. Or, individual, very large, completely submerged stumps. Individual stumps, and stump clusters produced not one crappie. Three of my larger crappie of the day came from individual stumps that were more than two feet across. If my micro jig was less than 12 inches, or more than twenty four inches below the surface, it was nothing. In the areas of open water more than 20 feet pockets or so, there were no fish. I hit five pockets of open water about 15 feet across between lily pad patches. Those five pockets produced eleven crappie between 11 and 12 1/2 inches. I also caught eight real nice specks on individual lily pads that were four to ten feet from a main lily patch. Them buggers were just hanging down there and blasting my micro jig as I slowly dug it by. The nice bluegills were in the very same area, just waiting to bed, but they were relating to the wood a bit more than the crappie, which surprised me a bit. Pretty much every bluegill I caught was on the down current side of a stump that had a small patch of lilies within a foot of two. All total, I landed a couple dozen specks between 10 and 12 1/2 inches, and a couple dozen blue gills between 8 and 10 inches. I also landed a bunch of 5 - 8 inch gills, but they were up in shallows, or in open water right up under the surface.And all the good fish were in 3 - 6 feet of water. I kept 17 for fish fry with the grandkids this weekend and released three or four dozen of the same size.