The flight of the Osprey

[Ketchn]

Not to terribly long ago I went pitching jigs with a buddy of mine very frequently . These days we are both so busy with other things in life we don't get to go much together anymore.
He and I just don't seem to find the time to meet up ,so I said hey bud you want me to take a half day off and go hit the lake by your place Friday afternoon ?
He said sure lets do it ! So we met up at his house around noon and put a couple of bags of ice in the ice chest and got us out 2 rods each for jig pitching . So it began and down the road we went .
The lake was like always lately and void of any boats , why I have not a clue as its a flat full of crappie and just beautiful . It resides in a state park and everything is about perfect for crappie in that lake . Hardly any other predators to enjoys the shoals of shad with the exception of a few local bass and catfish .No striped fish and I am glad and to be sure I have never seen a place where threadfin shad get 7 to 8 inches long .
So we went to a spot we know well and the little Garmin lost its mind when we rolled up and down went an anchor and first drop up comes a crappie . We sat there shooting the breeze and whacking them for several hours and watching an Osprey bombing fish around us . That Osprey was pretty good and only missed once out of 4 drops and when the shad got pushed up shallow and small bass started just destroying them like you see in the movies it was quite entertaining . The really huge threadfins I spoke of earlier are often killed and not consumed as the bass doing it cant quite choke them down .
Anyway it was a splendid afternoon and we visited a few other locations and got bit every stop . Kept us under our 50 fish allowed and were off the water after about 3 hours . Sure was nice out there and only one boat ever showed up and he went the opposite direction .
The bite was like normal out on the open water there for the most part and a long cast parallel to a drop off and a creep it back to you was simply deadly . About any color works well this time of year so we tied on bunches of different jigs and played lets see if this will ketch one .
Fish were best in around 16 foot of water ,but some came from lots deeper and some from lots shallower . The graph about burned up chirping and the screen stayed flat out full of fish during the entire visit at all stops .
And this is my story and I am sticking to it …..
p.s. I pulled up a really interesting homemade anchor with our anchor at one location as well
KABOOM is the word

[SuperDave336]

That is an interesting anchor. Whatever works. Nice fish and I’m sure was a blast getting back out with buddy after a bit. Looks like it was a fun outing. Kaboom!

[svh]

Nice catch. Wanna sell that anchor ? lol.

We too have some Osprey that migrate through this time of year. I love watchin them nose dive, and come up with a surprisingly large fish. There is a particular tree about 75 yards across my cove, that they love to hunt from, and perch on to dine on their fresh fish. This one is not very photogenic, as you can see from the photo. Can't get close enough to get a good pic.

[BuckeyeCrappie]

Great pics. How do you like that WM speed shooter?

[Crestliner08]

Excellent report! Osprey are truly amazing fishermen for sure. We watched one dive several times yesterday as well (Report; 9/27/19 New England Forum). Wish I could have gotten a picture, but we were too busy catchin' - if you know what I mean.

Our lake is pretty full of crappie as well. Not of the size that you catch (all black crappie), but decent fish by any measure. Yet we too experience little if any crappie fishing pressure, other than us. Most folks up here are pre-occupied with bass and the salmonoids to be seriously targeting this species. Which is fine by us! LOL!

[skeetbum]

Nice fish and that anchor is truly unusual. There’s a YouTube video of an osprey getting a big flounder in three FOW. A great watch if you can find it, I’m shower bound. Thanks for the visit.

[DockShootinJack]

Good looking mess of fish. Great anchor, everybody has a coffee can filled with concrete. Nothing wrong with being different

[Ketchn]

Great pics. How do you like that WM speed shooter?

He likes that ,but he dont dock shoot with it, we do lots of casting sometimes and it casts well

[Rammer1961]

Very nice photos !!! Sounds like ya'll had a ball.

[Ketchn]

thanks for the reads and comments and to be sure it was a fun trip , we put the fish in the box as a trade out for yellow perch fillets he got up north the week before ,so it turned out real well for me . never cleaned a fish and got a bunch of fillets and managed to ketch fire out the crappie at the same time .