Caught some Crappie

Well, my first foray into Crappie fishing yielded 2 keeper crappie (10"), a couple 8" & several missed strikes. (released em all)

I fished Shawnee lake in Topeka this afternoon beacause it's about 5 minutes from home. Didn't expect a whole lot, but basically wanted to do some searching for the meagher walleye population that supposedly exists there and try my hand at some crappie.

For the Crappie, I rigged up with a small pencil slip float with a 1/32 oz round jig with a small pink & chartuese tube set about 18" below the float.
Found a submerged tree on the shaded south side of one of the lake arms. with the slight breeze I would cast my rig just upwind from the downed tree and the breeze would slowly push my bait across the deep portion of the tree. every pass the float would take a dive. once the wind died, so did my hits.

not the most exciting fishing I've done, but did catch em I guess.

Surface water temp was about 52 degrees in the arms and 50 'ish on the main lake. Fairly warm out (60 I guess) with a slight breeze, eventually becoming dead calm. No other fish to be caught but marked lots of "something" at the bases of steep dropoffs in 28-30 fow.
This last weekend, water was 48 degrees.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laker taker

not the most exciting fishing I've done, but did catch em I guess.

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It will get more exciting when your catching them one after another. Welcome to the board.:)

Crappie are quite smaller than the fish I'm used to pursuing,,,

but they could be some fun in numbers.
:D

I used to live near Lake Shawnee. There are some nice crappies in there if you can find them. Once you get to know the lake better, you should do okay there. Still, I would drive to Perry if you have enough time to make it worth your while.
If you want a better fight at Lake Shawnee, we used to drift the flats with shad during the summer and catch some nice-size channel cats. 5 to 15 pounds. They put up a pretty good fight.
Also, it's been probably 5 years since I fished at Shawnee, but my advice would be don't waste your time looking for walleyes there. Maybe the walleye fishing is better now, I don't know...

Thanks for the tip on Shawnee.

It doesn't seem to be a great fishery, at least from my limited experience (and at this current time). The Kansas Game & Fish seminar with the fishery biologists reported that Shawnee is not in great shape this year. It lost most of its wipers through dam releases, the crappie population is merely fair with most small fish, less than 8". Of the walleye population, it's suppose to have good numbers of keepers in the overall population, but the overall population is small.

I'll be hitting melvern quite frequently now that the eye spawn is winding down or over with.