A few more for the freezer

I had made plans for a trip yesterday afternoon with my usual fishing partner back on Thursday but he was unable to follow through (long story) so I took another solo trip to see what might be biting. Glad that I did! I got there and on the water at 4 and fished until dark at 6:30.



This nice crappie was the first fish of the afternoon and......(I'm pretty sure)... my first EVER fish on a roadrunner. I think it was also the big fish of the day at 11 1/2". I know others have good luck with them, but I don't think I've ever caught a thing except weeds on one. By the end of my trip, it also accounted for a couple more crappie and a bluegill.

I rowed around trolling the roadrunner as pictured, that same Stinger on a ball head and the usual grey stinger, also on a ball head, until I found an area holding loosely scattered fish. I dropped a marker and simply began to troll back and forth over a large area in the general vicinity and depth as the ones I marked. As I found a few tighter schools, I would try to jig them with a vertical presentation but had zero results that way. I did get one casting after trying to jig them up but trolling was what they wanted yesterday afternoon/evening.



The 2 green lures were the ticket at first; it wasn't until the sun went behind the hill that the grey began to hook 'em. It became the lure of choice for crappie and the one perch I hooked.



I kept a total of 4 'gills, 1 perch and 7 crappie. Keeper crappie were mostly around 10". I tossed back quite a few more short crappie and bluegills, too.
It was a more active trip than I thought it would be actually. Yesterday, it was pretty warm and relatively humid, and the surface water temperature was 64.