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Weekend Report.......
Well, the cold weather plan had to change a little. I didn't make Plum Bayou on Saturday, the wind was 25-30 mph all day. We camped at Willow Beach park and fished the backwater lake. Caught 26 nice ones on poles and wore them out on some yo-yo's last night. Some 2.0 - 2.25 lb slabs. Alot of 1 lb crappie. Caught the slabs on the north bank in 2-3 ft of water using black/white and gree/chart fishing 12-15" deep on the poles and 6-8 inches deep on the yo-yo's with golden minnows. How did eveyone else do???????
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Hey Dennis:
Sounds like you had a good time in spite of the cold windy weather.
We fought the wind yesterday afternoon for this mess:
They still seem confused here - scattered and moving deeper instead of shallower. We caught our best crappie and the big bass 31-feet deep in over 40-feet of water!
The shallowest we could get a bite anywhere was about 15-feet. We didn't try the real shallow areas since the surface temps had fallen some and the better fish seemed to be deep.
Darryl came along as my deck hand again and it sure made it nice having some help so I could concentrate on boat control. It's sorta tough fishing 6 to 8-feet down in the cover when the wind is pushing the boat around but that's what we had to do to get a bite most of the afternoon.
Thanks for the report!
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Hey Jerry,
WOW!!! That is one nice stringer of fish! That Saturday fishing was as tuff as I have seen in awhile. Sounds like they are a little confused around there. All of the bigger females I caught had eggs in them and some signs of bloody tails? I know some crappie spawn at different times through the year but have you been seeing signs of early spawn due to the unusually warm winter?
The backwater lake I was fishing was only 6 ft at the deepest, but them slabs didn't want that deep water on the south bank. They were huddled up on that north bank sometimes as close as 1 ft from the bank! Amazing........
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Hey Dennis:
We've not seen any signs of spawning yet but they are ready. The females are chock full of eggs and the males are starting to get darker around the gills. They want to get started as soon as possible and the only way to find out if "its time" is for them to venture into the shallows to see if the water is warm enough to put them "in the mood".
In a shallow lake with dingy water that warms up quickly I would expect the males are already scouting out the shallows for a spot to set up bed-making so they'll be ready when the mommas get in the mood. Any warming trend - even one warm sunny day can have them running to the shallows. If it cools off or the lake level drops they'll usually scoot right back to the staging beds close to the spawning areas though.
Right now they don't even seem to be on the staging beds yet here - still thinking its winter - but it won't take much of a warm up to get them moving in.
