Thread: Kaw lake archives

Little bit of competition out there. If you are looking for shad they are not to hard to find. This school was over 1/4 mile long, 200 yds wide and 10 ft thick.

Tim, might be enough shad there to keep those cormorants fed for a couple of days (unless it's a really big flock).

Kaw kind of showed it's colors today. Caught over 50 fish. Biggest was 16 inches. Had several doubles. You always hear people downsize their baits in colder water. The shad in the picture is about the best example I can give. He is over 4 inches long and came out of a 14 inch crappie. We use big bait year round

Great work once again Tim! Those are great looking fish. I'm excited to catch a nice Kaw crappie one of these days. Question for you, how do you spider rig in the wind? Does it bother the crappie when your baits are moving up and down 6-10" with each wave, or don't they care about that?

All depends on how hard it's blowing. If it's 10 to 15 mph I may go with the wind and use 2 drift buckets out the back of the boat. We also may push 4 poles out the front and use 4 out the back on a trolling rack with bigger weights (1 to 1 1/2 ounce). If the wind gets higher we always go into it. Key is keeping the rod tips close to the water (3 to 6 inches). Really have to be a line watcher in the wind. High vis line is a big thing.

Ice jigs pics the back looks gold here but it is silver. like the silver back for flash. Front can be any color I am partial to orange but black works also char.

Tim, Bobby and I never got bit. Launched at 10:45, fished until 5:30. Found all the brush you told us about. I guess I need to get busy and get some Crappie Spikes made up.

Problem right now is the shad. Crappie are feeding heavy on them now. If the shad moves the crappie follow. Shad are moving out to open water later in the day. The challenge is finding the right school. If the shad are concentrated near the bottom pretty good bet the crappie are not on that school. Always try to find the schools pushed higher in the water column from feeding fish. Hard to convince crappie fishermen to get away from the bank and fish open water with no structure. When you hear people talking about the poor fishing right up to the spawn that's usually when they are on the shad schools feeding up for the spawn. After chasing them around for years finally figured out they sometimes run in schools by size. If I caught 3 or 4 eight to 10 inch fish you could pretty much bet the majority was gonna be in that size range and I would find a different school of shad and try again. The new electronics have made this a lot easier because you can tell much easier if there are bigger fish under the shad. Hard to leave the structure but sometimes it may make the difference in a good day or burning fuel. Hope this helps.