Thread: Report: Chickamauga Lake crappie 12/20/2016

I took my good friend, Gary Fomby aka Biofisher today for a short crappie trip. Gary is a teacher at Central High School here in Harrison and also the Athletic Director as well. They are on their Christmas break and Gary emailed me last week and we set a date for today when the wind would not be bad. It was a good move.

The structures that we fished were: roadbed, creek channel edge, blow downs, off shore brush, and vertical structure. We caught at least one fish on each structure. I told Gary that I would pick him up at Harrison Bay State Park at 10:00 AM. The solunar tables that I go by gave us an 11:30 to 1:30 pm window in which the fish should be active. They were. For the first hour plus, we fished the roadbed because I knew that the crappie would not be very active at that time. We caught 2 yellow bass, one short crappie, and near 10:40, I caught the first keeper of the day.

When it reached 11:00 AM, I moved us to an off shore brushpile. The fish were there, but not very active yet. As it neared the 11:30 window, I began to catch keepers on a very subtle bite. I tried to describe the bite to Gary with each fish and after I put about 5 keepers in the boat, he finally caught one. When we made 3 casts each without a bite, then I moved us to a blowdown. On the first cast into the fallen tree, I missed a fish. Second cast, I caught a 14.5" 1 lb 15oz Black Crappie. Beautiful fish. We caught a couple more, the fish slowed so I moved again.

Next was brush on a dropoff. It was well into the movement time and we quickly got one limit and 4 over one limit. We nearly left this spot when Gary made one more cast and hook into a beautiful 14.0" Black Crappie. The end of the movement time arrived and we decided to fish one bluff structure before quitting. I caught one nice keeper there and that was it. No more bites and so we headed back to HBSP and put the boat on the trailer around 2:00 PM. I love it when a plan comes together.

Water temp was 48.6 degrees in the river. Some current in the river, but a strange current at Wolftever creek. The water was flowing back into the creek at a pretty rapid pace. We marked lots of bait and fish, but at the time that we fished that area, the morning movement had not started. We only stayed in that area a short time. Thanks for going with me today, Gary. You did really well after you got onto those subtle bites. Grin. Most of the bites we had today, we could not feel. Line watching a must.

Bass Assassin 1/24 oz orange head Limetreuse Glow caught every fish but one. I did catch a nice keeper on a Bass Assassin Bluegrass Dapper 2". We donated maybe 1/2 dozen jigs to the brush. Grin.

Nice pics ! Great post! Thanks for sharing.