Logan Martin

Date Fished: 2/22/05
Water Temperature: 53+
Water Clarity: 1 foot
I intended to get crappie yesterday morning, but caught everything but crappie: about 3 dozen bass (mostly 14-15" spots); 4 stripers (32-34"); and a mix of white bass, catfish & smaller stripes. I lost 2 other big stripes. The upper end of Rabbit Branch where I started was 62 degrees so I thought I would catch a mess of crappie. A couple of shallow brushpiles produced only small crappie so I started cruising the creek channel looking for suspended staging crappie. I was surprised not to see much until I got to the mouth of Rabbit Branch. At the creek mouth the depthfinder showed great numbers of fish suspended at 20-30 feet along a ledge drop into deeper water. I put a couple of minnows down on a bottom bumping crappie rig and immediately started catching bass. After the first dozen bass on minnows I switched to a small jigging spoon and caught at least 2 dozen more bass plus a lot of white bass and a few catfish. The 6 big stripers plus a couple of smaller ones all took minnows hanging about 8 feet under slip bobbers. Although I kept my boat within a few feet of a marker I dropped after the first fish, the deep side of the whole ledge area was active with feeding gulls and big surface swirls. Surface temp. was 53 and it was foggy. The surface activity stopped when the fog lifted, but there were still lots of hungry fish below when I left about 1 pm. I never did catch a keeper crappie.