Last hurrah, maybe?? 11-17

As I watched the weather forecast last night, I got the irresistible urge to make one last trip before the colder weather sets in for real.
I had planned to take the afternoon off to make it a long effort but ended up not getting setup and ready to go until 3:15. With it getting dark at 5pm, it was going to be a pretty short trip. Air temp was an even 60 and the surface water temp out away from the launch was 44.5. Mostly cloudy skies with a lot of wind.
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I trolled out toward the deepest basin where I hoped to find some obvious schools. Before I got there I had a decent bite and reeled in the first of 2 yellow perch I'd get tonight. Both came on one of Micanopy's creations.

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And the other; both about 10" or so.

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As I got out to the deepest basin, some crappie from the shallow end of the gene pool fell for my offerings. Here's a few of the dumb ones I landed this afternoon.

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I left the ruler at home today but I'd say the best couple were about 12" and the balance all better than 10". Once again there were in the deepest part of the basin, in the bottom 6' of the water column. Very few fish seen above the 15' mark anywhere along my path today. Thanks to a very brief lull in the wind, I was able to vertical jig up 3 crappie, the others came on a slow troll.
I punched the clicker 10 times today, with 2 perch and 8 crappie coming to hand. That's actually better than I expected to do on this trip. I did end up with one keeper crappie that was unable to swim back down after the release. The other 9 swam off strongly, thankfully.
I fished until I could no longer see the tips of my rods, about 4:55, but my catching was done by 4:15 or so. Never landed another fish after that time.
This might be my finale for the season, we'll have to see what Mother Nature has up her sleeve for the next couple of weeks. Hard water fishing is still a ways off, I'm sure.