Thread: Lake Eufaula archives

At Least the f5's were good

Anyone catching them on the banks yet? Headed that way Saturday and wondered if anyone had some reports.

Different areas of the lake will produce a spawn sooner than others and since I only fish the area by the boat ramp here in Arrowhead Estates, its the only place I can give a fairly accurate report. Towards the end of last week, the big males were coming in, almost black, and aggressive. They didn't show any signs of "fanning" because their tails were worn not down at all. Water temp has been climbing and got up to 56 last week when they were biting, but starting last Monday, the lake level began to rise and has came up 2.75 feet. Water temp is now 58 and holding. Catching very few now compared to last week. I haven't cleaned any females, but my fishing buddy has and he said the egg sac hasn't formed yet. Are we approaching the spawn.........not sure. Has the spawn come and gone...... I don't think so. I believe the water temp has to be up around 62 or higher to trigger the spawn. My guess is the spawn will come, but it may be two or three more weeks. Remember, this is my opinion for this one area only.

Reporting from Mill Creek here. We were catching crappie pretty good despite the rapidly rising waters here. You just needed a pair of waders to jig the trees, but they continued to bite. The females I've caught all carried eggs as well.

However, everything changed yesterday. I went back out at 7:00 a.m. and jigged a female out immediately and assumed I was going to have a great day, but then 30 minutes passed without a bite. I spotted a couple of gar, but didn't think much of it. I had better luck catching crappie midday anyway, so I packed it up and took a break.

I came back about noon and almost immediately, i spotted another gar, cruising along the bank. Then another, and another, and another. I had to move my rig on a couple of occasions to prevent one from taking it and snapping my poor panfish pole. I had zero bites and I quickly began to realize these gar were basically everywhere. I'm assuming they're spawning, since I saw a few of them swimming in pairs, and spooked out the few crappie left after the water rose. I'm gonna try again today, but I'm not too confident.

Originally Posted by SlabAlchemist

Reporting from Mill Creek here. We were catching crappie pretty good despite the rapidly rising waters here. You just needed a pair of waders to jig the trees, but they continued to bite. The females I've caught all carried eggs as well.

However, everything changed yesterday. I went back out at 7:00 a.m. and jigged a female out immediately and assumed I was going to have a great day, but then 30 minutes passed without a bite. I spotted a couple of gar, but didn't think much of it. I had better luck catching crappie midday anyway, so I packed it up and took a break.

I came back about noon and almost immediately, i spotted another gar, cruising along the bank. Then another, and another, and another. I had to move my rig on a couple of occasions to prevent one from taking it and snapping my poor panfish pole. I had zero bites and I quickly began to realize these gar were basically everywhere. I'm assuming they're spawning, since I saw a few of them swimming in pairs, and spooked out the few crappie left after the water rose. I'm gonna try again today, but I'm not too confident.

I had read an article once that Todd Huckabee had wrote stating if your in an area that you see gar then you are in an area the crappie are. He stated that crappie and gar like the same conditions to spawn and that the gar were a good sign.

Now some of the old timers claim that gar are there eating the eggs that the crappie drop and that they will scare any crappie out of the area.

I have know idea who to believe on the matter, but just wanted to share that with you.

Lake Eufaula looks like chocolate milk...........very dirty.

Smashed the fish on the north end!! Fish were caught shallow and we're yanked out of the water easily using the Huckabee pro series 10 footer. Fish were caught on the beaver bottom hair jig with a #2 hook. Purple head orange body. Fishing slowed down around 2pm. Today's fishing was done from the bank since the boat is out of commission .

All I know is the crappie stopped biting and the gar began showing up. Whether or not they're related is anybody's guess. If there's one thing I've learned after coming back to Eufaula last year, it's that there's a lot of older folks out there that know a lot more about fishing than I do. Haha.

That being said, I caught 2 more bright and early and I was seeing no gar and then I got no more bites. A couple of hours later I started seeing the gar again and the only bite I got was a gar running off with my last tuxedo colored jig, so I opted to come home and mow my lawn. I probably won't have another chance to go out again before the storms roll in in a few days, but I hope my best days are still ahead of me this season.

I can't complain too much, though. The 10 crappie I've caught is still better than the 4 I caught all year in 2015.