Sunday night crappie

[Crappieorbust]

Went last night, water temp 86.7 and stained. First fish of the night was a decent bass. Fished 8 hours and over all I would say the bite was slow compared to earlier in the summer. It took several hours to get bait fish around my light. And then they were tiny, I mean the size of a match head tiny, not the size I was expecting this time of year. What would have hatched this time of year that the fry are that small? The crappie last night seemed to have no rhyme or reason. Thermocline was around 26 to 28 ft and I was in about 20 ft of water. Caught fish from 3 ft deep down to 12 ft deep. They seemed to be scattered up and down the column. Lots of small fish, caught 48 total and only 20 keepers in the lot, a few of those would have went back had they not swallowed the hook. I was using 1 1/2 to 2 inch shiners under a slip float. I would have flurry of activity then a dead spell and catch 1 here and later another making me think they were really scattered. Then again I don’t recall fishing this late in the summer at night. But in the end, I did get to go fishing and even had some to bring home, and that has not always been the case.

[BuckeyeCrappie]

Beautiful fish, congrats. Now I know how to suspend my fishing light!

[Ketchn]

you are using some old school technology it looks like to me , we used to use a pretty fancy thing we made like that to hold our floating lights back around 1980 and to be sure hardly a soul fished at lake fork at night . we had that lake to ourselves it seemed as far as crappie at night went .
we even used a blacklight sometimes and black and chart tube jigs and were told many times that wouldn't work at night and we had to use minnows . we found that not to be true for sure .
I miss those peaceful nights on the water with our tape player cranked up ruining the serenity of the quiet out there
looks like a fun trip to me and congrats on the fish .