Pay No Attention……

[Micanopy]

,,,, to that little piece of line. You are great and very powerful and can easy catch little ole me !!!!






Next trip out I shall be having these following my boat everywhere I go. Again some of the plastics have been partially amputated to appear more diminutive. Yesterday the fish were offering me clues as to what they prefer at this time of year. Now it could be that the smaller minnows are easier for them to catch, and the plan is to grow fat, and that may be why they like little ones. The fish I managed yesterday certainly were fattened. Maybe they can simply stack more in their bellies. Maybe the smaller minnows just taste better. Final posibility is that the minnows are all that are available to them. Maybe the shad have moved to other locales and no longer offer themselves to the fish. In Summer big fat (shad) jigs with blades were doing the work for me.

Top left Devil’s Minner that has been cut down.
Under that are Bob’s jigs, the worms have been cut down
1/16th oz heads with a short shank 1/0 hook.

Right side is 1/4 oz

I am getting a little better at threading the baits onto the hooks, but that shortened shank is a huge help. Such a simple thing, but get off just a little and the bait is crooked. Better than half the time I do acceptable, but every so often perfectly.

Ran out of my super glue and had to substitute with Godzilla Glue in the big bottle. I daubed it onto a piece of scrap plastic and used a toothpick to apply a smattering to the head of the bait before sliding it up. This glue requires a long curing time so everyone is just kind of hanging out waiting to go to the pool.


Earlyier this year I decided to try my hand at hand ties, and ordered up some stuff, and bought a bunch of junk at local shops. Well I still have my huge piles of junk and wondered if I shouldn’t revisit the world of hand ties, but with a new perspective. I want smaller sleeker so……






I am going to slip a few of these into my 10 rod set and see if the fish enjoy that sort of thing. They are currently in the box absorbing some Slab Sauce.

I learned from earlier attempts that less tail is better than too much tail. So these have smaller tails. I like the short shanked hook much better for tying as it leaves a more compact lure. These are small jigs with big hooks. I lost two big fish yesterday, but I do not suspect that it was due to the hook being too large. Lots of little fish came to hand with the bigger hooks and upon inspection seemed to be more than capable of inhaling them. Lots of room down inside there. Besides those two, where the jig ripped free, I lost only one other and that was due to me being unable to get to him quickly. I had another fish on the line and left him to wait. Never give up a bird in hand for two in the bush. He hit the short rod next to the boat and I saw him surface and he was a solid medium, so it’s OK.


I also re-done up my rods and such and this time used fluorocarbon leader material and it did OK. I had some of this left over from my surf fishing days. It probably did not enter into the equation, but if it is durable enough to last a few trips, I will continue to use it. It does very nicely with my loop knot. Anyways busy day today so no fishing for me. Maybe I can go this weekend and test out the hand ties. The colors are right and the sizes are right so I suspect they will work just fine. If they don’t I can swap them out for plastics.

[DockShootinJack]

I would think that at some point shad would grow to large to be eaten by certain size class crappie. Then minnows would be a steady food source until the next shad spawn.

[Micanopy]

That makes sense Jack.



My lakes are shallow salad bowls with no structures to gather fish. Flat bottoms the whole way. As I troll about there will be times the fish will bite like crazy, followed by nothing. Hit or miss affair most times. Occasionally it will be a single fish, no fish, single fish, no fish affair. So the fish might be schooling some times, and the fish might not be schooling some times. My guess is that the fish prowl about looking for baitfish schools to harass. Like wolf packs. Sometimes entire areas of the lake seem devoid of fish, and next trip out those spots are loaded. Sometimes 6.5 feet is good, but 7.5 is not good. Weird. They definitely either move about or they all get full and hungry at the same time.

I like to observe other folks as they fish and try to discern any pointers they might reveal. Spider rig guys use minnows, suspended under corks about five feet deep. I see them baiting up and can see their buckets so I know they are using minnows. For the most part they catch small to medium sized fish. Surely a few large ones, but none that I have ever seen. They do troll about, but many times seem to be adrift. Over here, over there, they don’t seem to target locations, just slowly move about on the surface.

Long line guys also seem to just kind of work an area without regard to specific spots. I understand it is not easy to double back when dragging ten lines, but I do so. I can catch fish like crazy in a spot, mark the spot on GPS, make a slow turn and head right back and nothing. As if the fish moved on. With nothing to cling to, I can see where they would just wander about in small schools. Big lakes, lots of baitfish, and this maybe their best technique to fill their bellies.

I made some more hand tied jigs and have dribbled Slab Sauce upon them and added them to the box. Nice complement of these smaller sized plastic baits all ready to go fishing. It will be interesting to see how they do against the plastic baits. It doesn’t take much to see what is working and what is not. The fish hit the same jig three times, and another not at all, I swap out. It gets tricky because sometimes I catch a nice fish on a jig I was thinking about swapping out. Seems that the box might hold a secret weapon just waiting for me to notice, but usually practice proves otherwise. The chartreuse yellow/monster green combination is my best producer, and has been for the past five months or so.

The hand ties have been dosed with Slab Sauce and that may influence my comparison against the plastic. They have been sauced too, but the chenille really holds the sauce and will certainly remain sauced much longer than plastics.

The fish loved my bladed jigs, then they didn’t, and they still don’t now. Not sure what the deal is with that as it would seem to me a reactionary bite would work. Seasonal changes I imagine. What they want to eat in Spring, changes during Summer, and changes again in Fall. I read that lake fly larva make up a large portion of a crappies diet. The larva live in burrows in the lake bottom mud and the fish kind of suck them from their holes. They said that an analysis of their stomach contents showed this. I noticed the muddier the bottom, the more lake flies there were.

Grass shrimp is another stable of their diet and they cling to vegetation along the shoreline. Well fish out in the middle of the lake cannot access the shoreline and probably don’t eat many shrimp. So a netting operation would tend to collect samples of fish that are in the open waters, and that just eat lake fly larva. Also, not sure how to design a swimming lake fly larva or grass shrimp jig. Perhaps dropping down in jig sizes more closely matches shrimp. They make a Sabiki rig thingie that has small shrimp and that might prove useful.

Anyways, the weather has definitely turned colder and the lake water has dropped considerably. No doubt that changes the behavior of the baitfish, and that means the crappie that are feeding on them, and with me at the top of the food chain, I must also change. So figuring things out can be a challenge, but a challenge that is fun. I have already learned so much, and there seems no end in sight for things yet to be discovered.

[DockShootinJack]

For 3 weeks straight the Itty Bit Slab HuntR's were the hot lure for me. Today they scored zero. By the way they look like grass shrimp to me. The color stayed the same. They wanted the Baby Shad size lure this week. I watched a boat trolling minnows this morning. I did not see them catch anything.

[Micanopy]

I went yesterday and nabbed about a dozen nice keepers, with about a half dozen pitch me backs. The morning was in high 40’s and a brisk wind to begin, then later the wind died down, the Sun came out and warmed me up very nicely. I saw others fishing, not catching, so it was a slow day for everyone. I wasted time trying a new area as it had little ones scattered here and there. Again there were not disasters even though I turned often. The lines seem to do just fine with the rod setup I am using.

The newest lures did nicely when there were fish around. Again adjusting the line whilst trolling yielded some immediate bites. I would just pull at the line and let it go and wham. Not every time but when I was bored it brought a smile. It is either they are following or the jig is uninteresting until it dips and takes off.

I made some new jig heads.



Chartreuse yellow transparent. When undercoated with white yields an ugly yellow, but dip a shiny just poured head and you get gold. In the sunlight it looks grand. I thought about adding eyes but that would ruin the gold effect. Some baitfish have a gold tinge to them and this reminds me of those.

Here is one in sunlight. Photo misses some of the glimmer, but it is a better gold than buying gold powder paint.




1/16th oz with a 1/0 short shank EC hook with FreeStyle heads, or a Whacky hook size #2 for Bat jig heads. The slightly longer shank of the Whacky fits some baits a little better, and the EC hook better with my smaller baits.

I did not make any heavy jig heads this time. Want to try something new. I plan to make rigs and add sinkers ahead of a smaller jig. This for the four rods that stay kind of close to the boat. I catch enough fish next to the boat to warrant experimenting some. In this way all my lures will be 1/16th and small even if fished in close and deeper than it would ordinarily run.

[Micanopy]

Misremembered…..only brought home 10 fish.

[DockShootinJack]

Those should work nicely

[Micanopy]

[Micanopy]

Those should work nicely

Jack you are always so nice. Thank you for commenting. Now are you ready for this……..









Wait






Wait for it












Yesterday I was doing nicely with a few of those hand ties I showed earlier. This is about the size, shape, and color combination that I surmise will be my best next trip out. Green, yellow, gold with frog’s eyes.

I did notice yesterday that the hand tie jigs pull harder on the rod tips than plastic baits. So the plastics I am using are sleek. I imagine the chenilles are catching water. Nice to be back to tying even if the plastics are awesome.

[skiptomylu]

Just as an FYI for your thoughts.

I have been long lining since about 1979 and have done it a lot of ways and lots of different distances before the turn around. Unlike some I fish one rod in hand and stop when I get one on.There have been places I would go several hundred yards before turning around to pull back to my starting spot. However one of the best spots I ever had there was only maybe 25 yards back and forth over the same water and this particular spot was long time back and very special, but with myself and one other person we would average 60 to 70 crappie per hour and yes I miss that spot all the time. It just needs Hydrilla and I have not been able to catch it with the Hydrilla for a very long time. I would guess most of the time I will pull maybe 100 to 200 yards back and forth as long as the action is pretty steady.

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