When the bite is on fire, don't look a gift fish in the mouth!

[Spoonminnow]

A local lake I've fished for decades as never been on fire as in the last 30 days. Water level like in many states is up over 1.5' than normal. Pad stems have grown to over 3' so the leaves are on the surface. Fish locations are varied with some patterns holding day after day. Incredible are the numbers caught in single locations! Even more are the bites found through out the day!

The day before yesterday my partner and I boated over 100 fish. Yesterday solo, I boated 70. This lake has an overpopulation of crappie with sizes averaging 9". Being the dominant fish, 95 % of the catch are crappie. The strikes are hard and hook sets easy. Many soft plastic lure shapes and actions provoke them and other species. Here are a few that worked well in the last 2 days:


Note the various stick colors.

[DockShootinJack]

Nice catches

[SuperDave336]

good job

[Opie1]

Our water levels in local reservoirs are down in NE Ohio. The one I fish is 5' below summer pool and 1' below winter pool. Bud and I did 127 crappie on Saturday. Solo, I had 56 last Wednesday. July and August are the best months for catching crappie. The heck with spring spawn.

[BobC]

Sounds like a great place to fish and the lake sounds like it does need to have some fish going home for dinner! Thanks for the ride along!
Bob

[Spoonminnow]

A few amazing things:
1. schooled crappies in areas near larger pad islands - one fish after another. Same for gills.
2. crappies in 3'-6' near those pads
3. strikes just as the lure is being removed from the water for another cast or taken off bottom for same
4. the bite was an all day thing from 8AM - 3PM (got too hot to stay our longer at 83 degrees

Too bad the crappie are (supposedly) protected by a 25 fish limit/ 10" min. length. Seems to me other species are suffering from overpopulation by one species especially during the spawn. Besides which few anglers keep fish in this lake.
Another thing: the same agency disallows m stocking my manmade farm pond with legal fish I catch. No outflow BTW. A word comes to mind....!

[BuckeyeCrappie]

Very nice sir. Thanks for sharing