Finally had a decent day on the water! I ended up cleaning 16 crappie probably caught around 23-25. I caught a variety of fish.. A pile of gills, a monster largemouth, 5 smallmouths, and a big ugly catfish that went 10.5 lbs. the goal today was to explore and that’s just what I did. I found some weedbeds in 14 fow and thought it was going to be the jackpot for crappie, well I was wrong. I fished that weedbed for 20 minutes or so and only landed a few decent perch. I tried the deeper edges off the shallows trying to locate structure on the drop offs and didn’t find much structure, I did mark some humps and bowls and put waypoints on them. The humps and Bowls were anywhere from 10-17 fow. I didn’t catch much in them just some perch. As far as the crappie went I found some nice bottom with structure they seemed to like. All of the crappie I caught were in deeper water and they were packed in there. I even found a few crappie suspended, I couldn’t see anything that would attract them but I was catching them. While Looking around I can promise you one thing, the fish aren’t going to starve, I marked and seen so much baitfish I think every fish could eat nonstop for a year and there will still be a billion bait fish. Behind some of the islands were just insane. I think I need to find a more efficient way to fish deeper water. I was running a 1/16 oz jighead on the bottom and a 1/24 oz jighead about 14 inches above that. It seems like it took forever to get down to the right depth. All my crappie were caught with a small Bobby garland jig tipped with small minnow. What kind of rig do you guys use for deeper structure to get your bait down a little faster? I’ve never really fished this deep for crappie and I am not setup for it. I got lucky because we had minimal wind today and I don’t have a trolling motor setup to help me with control. So I know I have to figure something out there because I don’t want to be dropping an anchor all the time.
Chaunc it it was nice seeing you at the launch!! Attachment 346808