Heck of a trip today

I got a call last night from 870 inviting me to fish with him this morning on one of his favorite spots. Of course I said yes, and we met and launched about 7 this morning. Quite a layer of fog a few hundred feet up over top of the water that would take a while to burn off so we had rather subdued lighting for quite some time. Our first stop didn't produce much but he did land this big perch as his first fish of the day.

It would later measure out just shy of 13" but the picture doesn't do it justice; it was a BIG perch!. My first fish of the day would be a small pumpkinseed with great colors.


We'd work that area for about 30 minutes without much more luck and motored over to a completely different part of the lake, hoping to get some or our favorite quarry, the crappie. Once we got there, we conferred and agreed on a route and began casting along 15-18' contours. Not much was found and we moved over to the emerging weeds in something like 8-10' of water. Bingo!

This was the big fish of the day, probably close to 13" but we didn't measure. We both began to catch our share of the crappie, along with umpteen small perch and bluegill. Here's a few of my fish.







Crappie of all sizes would be boated, from about 5" on up to 12 or 13". Of course he'd catch the biggest ones, but we both landed a bunch of others, with the approximate 9" and up headed to the cooler. We kept plenty, along with I think 3 perch (when it looked like we might not find the crappie) along with one fat rockbass (870 was probably thinking I was a bit off-kilter keeping that one).



We never counted them but with the both of us cleaning, it didn't take long to process them in to fillets. Should have snapped a picture of the mound of fillets we split up.
The sun burned through and got rid of the overcast about 10 and while the bite did slack off some, we were still getting good action from the panfish in general. We probably should have called it a day about 11 but we pushed it until noon before heading for the beach.
We did learn that it pays to switch colors and lure actions; I had great luck with a BG Baby shad straight tail in Cajun Cricket as my usual go-to's weren't producing. Later, the Tennessee Shad Triple Tail grub on a Road runner head would be the favorite. Not sure exactly what colors my partner used but they sure worked for him.
Can't put a number on how many of everything we boated today but it was a Bunch with a capital B. Easily 60+, I'm sure.
A memorable trip with a good fishing partner made for a great way to spend a Sunday.