Chickamauga post spawn crappie

I’ll bet everybody thought that I had been kidnapped, but no one ever wants to kidnap a 76 year old with a hearing impairment. Grin. It has been 9 days since my boat has been in the water and it was getting antsy. So, Mr S. and I took it out before daylight and began looking for crappie.

I had 3-4 different structures and places to fish/scout as I had no clue what the fish have been doing since I was last on the water. Also, my solunar table indicated that today was the poorest day to fish this week, but the best time to fish is when you can because it is gooood for you.

The tables were wrong. We caught at least one fish in every place that we tried and ended up at 1:15 pm with 16 keepers and a dozen or more short crappie. Lebron caught the only odd fish today with a small spotted bass, a white bass and a really pretty Warmouth bass. I had a 14.5” tarp White crappie and I promise you that we both thought it was a bass. What a fight from this fish. It was mean. I released it as I do almost all tarp crappie unless they are injured. Lebron took a limit home for his freezer.

TVA running 45,000 cfs and surface temp was 76 degrees. We fished bluffs, docks, off shore delta cut, main river spot that ran right against the shoreline, off shore brush in 16 feet of water, deep roadbed, off shore hump, and one spring. Fish were everywhere that we looked. A couple of spots yielded multiple fish but some spots would only give us one fish.

With 45,000 cfs running and N wind slightly blowing, I had to cast my 1/16 oz jig with a Bobby Garland Sunset Slab Slayer glued on it about 30 feet upstream of the fish that were suspended on a break at 15 feet deep. 8 keepers off that spot. Much fun when a plan comes together.