Mississippi River backwaters
I fished a backwaters near Winona on Thursday and the fishing, and catching, was superb. We focused on stick-ups in about 30-35 feet of water with a relatively low flow rate and found crappies all over scattered thru the wood at between 5" and 9" of depth. Some were working the wood, others were simply right out in the middle of wide open water. What we threw out to them or how we offered it wasn't an issue, but color choice made all the difference between being hit or not being hit. The bluegill glitter in clear plastic with a chartreuse tail was the color to have tied on.
We arrived at 5:30 to heavy, dense fog. By the time we got to where we wanted to fish we had some sunlight and as soon as we figured out a part of the pattern we were in fish. The fish were all decent sized today with a total of three dink fish. All of what we kept we in the 11 1/2" to 12" range. While we could have kept 50, or two single 25 fish limits between us, we kept 11 so we could have a fish dinner that evening. In three hours of fishing we caught maybe 80-90 crappies that could have been kept, some a tiny bit smaller than what we kept and some much larger than what we kept. The three dink fish don't really count, but the smallest crappie we caught that could have come home was just under 10 1/2". The fish quality was very good.
The heat drove us off the water, but those few hours we had to catch crappies was simply great.