Weekend Night Fishing

Friday evening/night took my wife and daughter in law fishing. The evening started about 6pm with the remote for my Xi5 not working correctly. It would only turn the motor on and off and increase speed. No steering or being able to decrease speed or anchor lock. We didn’t let that stop us from fishing. I just had to kneel buy the trolling motor and manually move it. We only went a short ways from the dock to some deeper water where I was able to find some fish on the live scope. Dropped an anchor and started slip bobber fishing with minnows (6 to 8 ft depth) for the two girls and I tried single pole jig fishing (had a good many hits but only managed to catch 2 or 3). The two girls were both catching more than me. Crappie have to be 9 in on this lake to keep. Got some “Clickers” (legal fish that get counted) as well as smaller “Splashers” (throwbacks).

At dusk I set up for night fishing with green lights. We used my original Alumiglo 2ft light and one of the 1ft lights from Hydro Glo I bought on clearance.
https://www.crappie.com/crappie/main...g-green-light/
Lights were just dropped over the side of the boat in approximately the middle of an 1860MV so the brightest area was in the middle of the boat with the bow and stern areas having less light. It didn’t take long for the fish to start congregating around the boat. Initially all the fish were at 14 to 16 ft deep so I had to adjust the poles for the girls to start catching. As the night went on the fish kept expanding the amount of water column they were using. At one point my wife was just dangling the jig and minnow as deep as she could see and sight catching. Ended the night with 34 “Clickers”, 2 Perch and no clue on the number of “Splashers”. We quit when the ¼ pound of minnows were all used up.

Saturday evening/night my cousin and I went back to the same area with pretty much the same results, and same fish behavior. Fish started out 14 to 16 ft deep under the light and gradually started using more of the water column. Ended up with 29 “Clickers” and a lot for “Splashers”. Both nights fish sized ranged for 3 to 10.5 inches.
Trolling motor remote still isn’t working but at least this time I took the foot pedal with me to be able to steer the motor.

Attachment 406128

Fridays catch

Attachment 406129

Livescope pic of the fish. They had started using more of the water column when i got around to taking some pics.

Sounds like a great trip. Very productive as well. Sure is good to be out at night. You can miss the heat and the boat traffic

Zeke, good article, and pictures. Thanks for taking us along.

Thanks for adding the live scope shot….when I finally get a boat these kinds of references help!Nice catch!

Clickers and splashers...I like those terms!:ThumbsUp

It started as a joke with Clickers. The girls are kind of competitive with trying to catch more keepers than me, so they were always asking if the fish was big enough to be legal. So I would tell them they could click the counter when it was legal, that lead to just telling them it was a clicker. Before long they would just ask if it was a Clicker. Just this year when they weren't big enough I'd tell them it was a splasher.

Those two keep me busy when they go. Neither of them will take fish off, my wife will bait her own hook with wax worms or minnows but my daughter in law wont put her own minnows on. I tell them just get the fish in the boat and I'll deal with it from there. They have gotten pretty good at slinging them into the boat.

My cousin gave me the counter I think it has something to do with counting trees when bidding a logging job. It has 3 separate counters on it that are different colors White, Blue and Grey. It works out well on the boat, I rarely go fishing without someone else in the boat.

Congratulations on two fine nights and thanks for sharing the pictures. I now have two new term for my fishing vocabulary!

interesting for sure , crappie often rise up at night under the lights , we sometimes started around 15 foot deep at midnight and by 4 or 5 am they would be 4 to 6 foot down , as the bait got thicker on the surface the crappie would rise up to them .
looks like pretty fun stuff to me, great way to beat the heat as well .
congrats and KABOOM