Thread: Night fishing for Crappie

Water was pretty stained last Wednesday night, but didn't seem to affect it too much. You'll get the really small dart minnows showing up quickly, but within about 20 minutes or so we had some nice shad and bigger bait fish circling the light. We have 2 green flouro lights, and we had one floating white light. The bigger bait fish seemed be to attracted to the white light.

You'll see them dart off and scatter every once in a while and that'd be about the time we'd get a bite. Sifted through a lot of dinks, had about 18 or so keepers.

This night fishing is addictive though. Before we knew it, it was about 4:30 or so and we ran into people putting in for the morning shift.

Probably be back down there Friday night trying it again. We seem to do a little better each time we go.

Also, once the sun goes down I can't get a bite on a jig. I have to switch to a minnow to get any action it seems like.

I've had pretty good look at night on LOZ. Usually running jigs on the docks with blue lights. Now these are usually docks that I have good luck on in the daylight. Saves on spending money buying submersible lights too.

Seen this post awhile back and decided to give night fishing a try. I decided to go with the green alumiglow light for the low power draw and the 50000 hr LED lights. We tied up to a bridge piling and had bait circling the light in minutes. Had crappies eating the minnows 6-7 feet from the light within 30 minutes. About 150 fish later the clock struck 2 :-). I remember the three of us all unhooking fish at the same time three times and doubles were common. It was dink central with only 18 keepers in the bunch. The fun was over after the boat was back on the trailer. I lost 3rd gear and overdrive on the tranny on the way home. My buddy called me a few minutes after he left my place at 3am and told me his truck broke down on his 10 mile trip home. Maybe we should have stayed home?

Man, that's weird with the vehicle issues in the middle of the night. That sucks. I s'pose the only thing worse woulda been issues on the water. That's my biggest fear. Having boat issues in the middle of the night. Glad y'all had fun and at least got into em. Now just gotta find the bigger ones. Do you think part of the problem was the bridge pillars, where there are known to be smaller fish?

I'm heading to the transmission shop now. They say 12-1400 so it's not near as bad as I thought it might be. Can't complain too much about 293000 on the original tranny, oil, and filter :-). We expected the dinks on the W bridge. It was the first time with the light and I wanted to set up where I knew they were. We are going to a small state lake with some good crappies this Friday to see how it works there. I fished that lake the day after the smithville tournament and the shad were about thick enough to walk on during the day. Should be impressive under the lights.

Originally Posted by claybuster

Were those lanterns candle power?????? Didn't know if they had white fuel back then????? Propane?????? Did you have matches or just smack a couple rocks to get a spark????? I'm kind of a pioneer history buff and love to hear stories about them days.............. "just funnin ya buddy"

It was so far back, I still had hair. It was so far back, we still had to mix our gas. Matches had been invented but we forgot them and had to rub two sticks together to light the lantern, and in response to another post, the bugs were horrible, but the beer was ice cold!

Damn, time for trans problems. I just took Liz's car to the dealer for CVT trouble. An o-ring that you have to drop the damn thing to replace! Hey, sounds like you had a good time though! Joe, you got some of it right; trouble on the water and at night. You left out having your wife with you!