More not crappies!

[no1son]

We were out from about 5 to 8 this evening, we put back a respectable 2 limits of crappies including 2 13"ers, an 11 and a couple of 10s. Also a 4, cutest little thing! Best fish came right at dark. Most fish came on very slow vertical jigging right at the wall edge, with just a couple or three or 4 on short casts with very slow retrieves right at the bottom. We had to really work for our crappies this evening, but the return was very respectable.

It is getting to be real spooky how many really good bonus fish we are running into this spring. This evening it was largemouth bass. We hooked into 5 and landed 4, the smallest of which was about two pounds. I lost the hawg I hooked into. My fishing partner landed the other three, one 19.5", one 20" and one 22", all fat fish. All of these bass came on vertical jigging right up against the wall we were standing on. We have never seen so many big fish of so many different kinds pick up the little jigs as we have seen this spring.

[no1son]

This evening the two of us did 18 crappies, the biggest was a mere 10", and we had to work for them. It was a fish and then wait and work and change baits and presentation and then maybe another fish. They were there but they weren't eating. Most crappies came on a jigging presentation that was so slow as to be almost a dead hang right at the bottom which was less than 5' deep in both places we fished tonight.

The big story is another bonus fish. My partner, jigging the tiniest Acme Phoebe, landed a 26" walleye. The moon was up and the sun well down. The presentation was a slow lift and then a free fall fluttering descent. Strike was right on the bottom about 5' below my partner's shoe leather. It was too dark to get a picture off his cell phone.

As always, everything was released.

[IMFSHN]

The moon was up and the sun well down. The presentation was a slow lift and then a free fall fluttering descent.

We made a quick run to our old stomping grounds, the Minnetonka Regional park and it's fishing peir.

Fishing was really sparse, and deliberately slow presentation seemed best for us as well. I did hook into what felt like a realy good walleye...you know -the random heavy head tug they do when they get to a about 7lbs. Had it on for a while and it broke off right before the 8 year old could get over to see. The rod and reel were stellar. The older line...not so much. Will be picking up some new 4lb line for that reel and replace the lost tiny, white crank bait with some siblings, before spending the day on the lake today.

Had a nice conversation with a Three Rivers Park District Police Officer about the neighboring lake's shore opportunities. We'll have to give them a shot this spring.



"A man must believe something-I believe I'll go fishing."

[no1son]

I have never fished that particular dock. I don't remember ever having actually fished Minnetonka in fact.

We normally fish any one of some dozens of spots deeper in the west Metro. Not every dock is on when we hit it either; so we are quick to move between spots, if the action seems to warrant it, or rather lack of action I suppose I should say. We both carry carefully limited ultralight kits and a couple to four or five little rods, easy to carry in a single trip to and from the car. Street or lot parking is close to nearly every spot we use; so we may hit four or five different locations in just a couple or three or four hours. When we find fish we stick, if we don't we move, just the same as if we were fishing from a boat.

I will say this about the docks around here. They are structure themselves every bit as much as weedbeds and bottom breaks. We have taken hundreds of crappies out of the dock shadow, but that is generally only in specific points along it. We always work the dock edge and explore the bottom along its length especially when it extends out past the weed line. There is always a breakline at the weed edge and very often a second smaller one farther out. Any inside corner past the weedline provides another overhead break.

That second break is often a holding point for schools that will move up over it against the weedline to feed. So are those inside corners which provide added shadow. This time of year in warmer, stable weather, they will often be shallower along the dock even when resting; later on and during unsettled weather they will usually rest a bit deeper and move shallower to feed, usually up toward the weedline, although once in a while shallower out into the lake, pretty much depending on the forage I would guess. One good indication to look for is a pretty flat feeding platform between the outer weedline and the second drop, and that second drop can be very subtle. Also the wider the weedbed the dock crosses the better it generally is.

One other dock related structure we like is a weed point parrallel to the dock, one you can cast into and over from the dock. This time of year you can often work a little jig through the sparce new weed growth and then out over the drop at their outside edge. If crappies are at all active or the weather is pretty much stable, at this time of year they are often laying in that first break along that point, although sometime up in pockets in the weeds themselves.

If you can get the exact spots where they are laying up they will very often take a "morsel" dropped essentially into their mouths, as long as they don't have to chase it. If you get a pod laying up at a point along a dock, vertical, very slow jigging can produce fish just about as fast as you can get the morsel to settle to them, but you have to be right on top of the pod, and the bite also is normally very soft. Most of the crappies we take are not in the chasing mood, but are perfectly willing to graze on bits that fall into their mouths provided you get the appeal right.

You generally also have to be on the correct side of the dock to be accurate enough. What you look for then is if there is a counter current running under the dock in the opposite direction from any crossing wind. That is usually there even in lakes with no resourvour current. That allows you to present into the edge of the dock shadow right in the faces of any fish facing into that current. Granted in most "landlocked" or natural lakes that current will not be much, but you are looking for the detail that the fish are using.

You posted a very nice picture of the boy on the end of the dock. But I think you can figure out from the above that we almost never fish dock ends. On a good dock that will generally be beyond the crappies, not always but far more often than not. My favorite docks all extend well beyond the weed line. This time of year I work the shallower sections of the docks, but later in the year and after sudden temperature changes the deeper breaks as deep as 20' can hold the crappie schools and still produce respectable to fantastic numbers of crappies to a slow, soft jigging presentation of that "morsel".

Dock shooters know most of these things from experience, but those of us standing on the docks can use that same information very successfully.

One other thing. I like docks that have decent populations of resident sunfish. The crappies will often be below them and feed up into their bottom layers. Like they nibble on plastic tails, sunfish will often pick things apart, generally more or less messy feeders. IMO crappies will lay below them and feed on the morsels that settle out, which require no chasing on their part. When I see sunfish actively feeding, I look for crappie flashes below them. I also watch the sunnie for when they suddenly disappear which normally means some much bigger eater has moved into the area.

Crappies also cue on the sunnies. If the sunfish suddenly head for cover the crappies almost always duck even faster. On the lakes I fish that is a muskie as often as a large bass or pike; so we will say there is a tooth-carp in the house. I do not like muskies. In fact I would pick having carp around to a muskie, and I don't expecially like carp either. If there is a wolf pack of muskies, which there may be at times, one could just as well pack up and move.

Crappies will usually abort even a full fledged feeding spree in that case and may not return to it even after the wolf pack has moved on. It also pays to notice, if you can, where the big eaters lay up in ambush, when they show up. Crappie schools and pods will very often use those same exact ambush points when the big eaters are not around, especially those pods with the larger crappies. The various types of big eaters will often use those same spots depending on which species shows up.

Presenting exactly on the money pays dividends, often with a bonus. Most of the big eaters will also take a "morsel", if dropped directly into their mouths. I have never seen that so true as it has been this spring.

[no1son]

We were for a few hours last evening, until the gnats chased us off the shoreline that is. We found crappies in three spots all shallow, but could not coax any kind of consistent bite out of them. We released a bare handful of smallish fish between us and that was all we could manage. The game fish were out though, my partner landed a 2 foot muskie in one of those spots and I hooked a couple of 18-20" walleyes in another. A guy fishing the little crappie minnows also landed a nice pike pushing about 30" right next to us. All these game fish were eating tiny and laid up in feeding stations very shallow. All were released, of course.

I suppose once seasons open they will disappear, all except the muskies that will continue to plague us all summer just like they have been doing for the last several years. It's gotta be personal on their part; they even plague us on the ice. Both of my flasher transducers have the scars to prove it, too.

[CTom]

I made it out in the boat today Dale and did well on the crappies. I popped a nice white, 13.75". We may head to the Mississippi backwaters on Friday. With the cold front predicted the river will be more stable than the lake.

TB is on a tear.....got banned. lol Nice guys....

[no1son]

I made it out in the boat today Dale and did well on the crappies. I popped a nice white, 13.75". We may head to the Mississippi backwaters on Friday. With the cold front predicted the river will be more stable than the lake.

TB is on a tear.....got banned. lol Nice guys....

Nice fish. We don't see too many whites up here in the Cities, nearly every crappie we catch is a black, except in one lake where an occasional white shows up schooling with the blacks.

We got too successful in our fall back spot. Too visible in far too public a place. Now it is crowded even on weekdays and you can simply forget finding a spot of the weekends.

So we have been checking out the docks that the Park board put in a few weeks back. The sunnies and even some perch are starting to find them. Those with crappies should have them too in a pretty short order. Tonight we hit one surrounded by floating patches of snot. We couldn't even cast, only jig between the wads of floating Neptune puke. There was a pretty good afternoon bite of small perch which is encouraging, but the crappies either never put in a show (there was a toothcarp working the area for a while), and the sunnies did more tail swatting of the baits than biting, although they were visible all over the place. This particular place the crappies often take over when the perch call it an evening; so we kind of watch for them. Not tonight though, but we couldn't work it very well anyway.

We were supposed to get an additional couple of dock placements this spring. Now we hear there is a hold up. We were kinda looking forward to fishing them, but I guess it becomes another of those things to believe when you see them.

Let us know how you do on the backwaters. We have some slack water on the river here in and around the Cities that just might bear some attention, too.