Report; 10/5/19 COLD!

Winter is fast approaching! When Walt & I launched this morning at 8 am, the air was a "brisk" 30 degrees! And the water temp had dropped 10 degrees since our last trip - now 60 degrees. Besides a severe cold front that came in yesterday, we had to deal with unusual conditions, to say the least! This what the ride out to the main basin looked like with some fog:

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Yesterday the wind was up over 30 mph (reason for us not venturing out), but today, they were a bit more moderate, but still cold at about 5 - 15 mph and calm conditions at times as well. After our first side pulling run (at about .8 - .9 mph), we had marked almost nothing below us! No bait....no fish. While we explored the main body, this great fisherman gave us a look-see:

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A female or immature loon that kept diving and encouraging us to stay deep. He must have known something, right! But it wasn't the case for us today. We did catch one every now & then, but our usual scenario is to catch & release between 19 - 24 crappie in the first hour. No so today. After 3 hours of pulling jigs, we had only managed 22 fish. Didn't look too promising! And did I mention....it was COLD!

We did find one ball of bait out deep:

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But marking anything in the main basin was far & few between, as was our catch rate. So Walt looked at me and I returned the glance - without much conversation, we opted to hit the shallows. We don't like that, mainly due to the abundant pickerel population, which has a tendency to bite you off rather frequently (a real PITA). But ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right?

The first couple of weed edges we tried gave us little with regards to crappie. One LM bass and this fellow yellow:

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We tried another cove and picked up one or two little ones. The last cover we tried started to really produce for us. This one cove brought our total tally for the morning up to 48 fish (all C & R), with 11 bluegill, 2 largemouths, two yellow perch and 3 pickerel bite offs! The remaining fish were crappie. Here are a few pictures, starting with Walt's fish:

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Did he look cold? Not as cold as I was wearing my down parka! LOL!

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The crappie we did catch were definitely above average for this lake, so it turned out all good. We also had a fly over by the resident eagle and even flushed a wild turkey on our way out from the launch. Neat stuff. :)

All in all, a great morning of fishing for us. This coming week is filled with doctor's appointments and commitments other than fishing! Not taking into consideration the weather. But we will our best. After all, crappie fishing is what we live for!

Pictures aren’t showing up!

I know.....Slab is working on it. :)

Even though I can't see the pictures yet, it sure was a nice day to be out enjoying it. Smart of you to bundle up. Good job searching them out in other places to make the day a success, too.

Sounds like you had to work for it. Can't wait to see the pics. Cold is definitely the name of the game from here on out. Keep up the good work.