Bonus Fish While Sampling Crappie

We have been busy sampling crappie this month and will be the next two months. One lake that we are running trap nets on, we incidentally caught some pretty nice bonus fish. The funny thing is that I have scanned and searched this lake over pretty good in the spring and summer and haven't really found any redear this size or bigger. My question to yall is, do you think these redear stay in the same general area year around? Will I be able to find a redear bed during the spring in the same general area that we sampled these? I hope so because I have already recorded the coordinates just in case! We will be sampling this same lake over the next two months. Hopefully we find a couple more good areas.
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That’s a good question. Up in the lake at Nickajack I will sometimes catch some shell cracker under the crappie bridge
I fish. So I search the bay right next to the bridge every spring for their beds.....I’ve never found any. But if I go maybe 3/4 of a mile to the bays across the river I find lots of shell cracker beds each year. I wonder why that bay does not have shell cracker.....redbreast...or even bluegill beds but it doesn’t. To me it looks like it should be shell cracker.....bluegill heaven in the spring but it is not.

Regards


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I’m no help as to where or why, but those look great and I hope you find em when you go.

They will hopefully be there in the Spring for you to sore lip! A nice sized pair.

I am learning that shellcracker are indeed a challenging fish for the angler to find after the spawn. I ain't caught a nice one in months. This is a subject that is becoming a life long study for me. Not a lot of info on them out there..

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Originally Posted by jawjatek

I am learning that shellcracker are indeed a challenging fish for the angler to find after the spawn. I ain't caught a nice one in months. This is a subject that is becoming a life long study for me. Not a lot of info on them out there..

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Many shell cracker guides in Alabama call them the “Mystery Fish”. I was let in on a place I can find them in the winter below Nickajack Dam. Out of the years I’ve fished there I could only fish it one time...and they were there in big numbers and size. So why haven’t I fished it more you may ask....well most winters they are letting out so much water that you can’t safely get to the spot. It’s quite the conundrum....LOL. Maybe this year there will not be so much rain....but I’m not holding my breath. This is the problem fishing a tailrace on the TVA system.....you are at their mercy for water release. I’ve tried up in the lake for them in the winter but it is hit and miss.

Regards


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Yes, down here in Delacroix, LA off the side of the road, you could fill up 5 gal buckets of red ears in the Winter. Once it got into Spring time they would completely disappear. Sadly after Katerina came along it completely ruin that fishery.

I have zero clue , of the fish out there that can just vanish they are pretty good at it .
We dont have many in the close proximity to where i live best i can tell ya .
I might ketch 3 a year on a good year and in some spots i know they live in have never seen one .

Beautiful fish bro nice job

One thing i have learned about shell crackers is that i know noyhing about shellcrackers except during the spawn. I have pulled up to gill beds and the man in back of my boat would throw crickets and catch gills. I would throw dug worms and catch crackers in the same area. we were fishing gills beds in a slough and i happened to look down and the crackers were bedding in about 6 feet of water just a little out from the gills. Alphahawk, I know where you are talking about on Nickajack and you are spot on. Im sure you and I fish the same spot for crackers and like you said the other side of river is dead.