Thread: Thunderbird archives

3 saugeye between 15 and 18 inches with white curly tail grubs on the north side in about 5 FOW at around 6 pm. All three were caught in about 10 minutes, and nothing after that until we left at 830. Fishing from the shore, by the way.

2 crappie, 4 sandies and 1 largemouth. Only kept the 1 crappie that was 13". The sandies were monsters almost didn't feel right tossing them back but they weren't my targets. Had to fish from the bank. My friend backed out on me at the last minute with his boat and of course my boat isn't ready yet. I got out there there at 3:30 and my goal was to fish standing timber until 7 or so and then target the dam. Of course being on foot stopped this and around 5:30 I was done.

Going to hit it again in the morning. Temp of 67. Can't believe the week coming is going to cool off like it is. That's the last thing we need if we want this thing to break wide open from the banks.

Forgot to talk about the small crappie I had to throw back. I have heard stories of black crappie being in this lake but have never caught one. This crappie was a small male deep in black color. What made me think it was a black crappie was there was n't a pattern to the black on the body. Typically your white will have a stripped pattern with the black coloring but this one just had black randomly all over its body. No pattern at all. I should have took a pic but was walking across the rip rap on the dam and was having a tough enough time trying to do that. Thoughts?

Male white crappie Male black crappie. I assume u caught a dark make white crappie because the only place I have ever caught actual black species crappie was way back in the little river. Never caught one on the lake

My determination of the type of crappie isn't by the color of the fish but the pattern of the fish. White crappie will have a vertical line pattern in the body like the 1st picture you posted. This didn't. It had no pattern at all. The black was speckled all over the body. Not even a hint of a vertical line. I'm aware during the spawn the black gets deep in color and by no means am I determining the type of fish by the black that comes out during the spawn. I should have counted the spines in the dorsal fin.

I have caught 1 black crappie back in August on a brush near denver corner. Only one I have ever caught in thunderbird compared to the hundreds of white crappie I have caught from there.

I've never caught or seen a black crappie in person. When I pulled it out of the water the pattern immediately stood out to me.

I've caught a ton of them out of lake of arbuckles that place is loaded with them. Also dahlgren has its fair share of them too but I don't really care for fishing small body of water like that. I prefer them over whites, usually have a lil thicker fillet on them and they sure are purty. The one I caught at dirty bird was a nice one round 12 inches. But I let it swim due to the fact there so rare in there.