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From about a week and a half ago, picture is thanks to a bystander with a flash on his camera phone.
Attachment 89787
This one of several about this same size taken this spring on crappie offerings in crappie locations. Put back of course. The bonus fish have backed off with the recent unsettled weather up here. We take an occassional walleye with our crappies pretty much all summer, especially when we fish past dark as was the case here.
The weather is going to get really unsettled soon Dutch. Hold onto your hankie.
We opted for a trip to the Mississippi River's backwaters this morning and were rewarded well. The crappies were on a tear for the most part, but a nice bass and a decent perch joined in the fray too.
The water was sitting right at 58 degrees where we fished. We didn't look at water deeper than 9 feet and most of our action was shallower than 5 feet. Males are spraying and are super dark already.
Rain, wind, SNOW are all forecast to get started up late tonight so today maybe was the last day I'll be dunking baits until Mother Nature gets this junk out of her system. With 70 forecast for mid-week next week I'll set my sights for then. Today was comfortable despite flags standing straight out from the pole where the wind could blow freely. Only an occasional puff got to us and we had broken sunshine most of the morning with temps around 60 degrees.
It certainly does look like a cold "spring" weekend coming up. I doubt I will go out either until that moderates. I don't especially enjoy being miserable; I like fishing real well, but there are limits. I had my bout with the flu already this year, and once is enough.
One curious thing we've noticed is that we have yet to catch a colored up male crappie this spring and we have taken a whole lot of crappies already of just about every size you can imagine off a number of waters. Usually by now we are seeing at least some color. The sunnies are a different matter, lots of brightly colored males that P easily when you squeeze them. Up until about the last week the perch were still full of eggs too, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
Over the past week we have been sampling the docks recently put out with indifferent success. The sunnies are now using them, finally, but the crappies are still few and far between. Several of those docks have spawning areas around them, too, but still no obvious male crappies. And some pre-spawn areas either turned off when the weather broke and have not yet restarted or have yet to turn on in the first place. Where we can find warmer water, though, we find crappies. Some of those places you can't really present to, but we can hear them feeding. Lots of folks around here that were expecting to fill buckets are being disappointed, which is all right by me actually.
We are seeing carp move through a number of areas, some huge ones. That is a pretty good sign that spring is progressing. One of them popped a little plastic for me last evening and then headed out to the middle of the lake and with an ultra-microlight and 2# test there was no way to hold em either. To top it all off the fish took off right under one arm of the dock we were on. I am not sure if I ended up cutoff or the line just broke, I think the line just broke, since the fish bored down to the bottom and stayed there, making me think it was a true carp not a toothcarp. We tangle with quite a few true carp on the little plastics especially in the spring.
Luck to you.
Nice walleye, wish I was back living in Rochester, MN.
Go Twins!