Thread: Fishing with Matt Monahan 7/27/2018

For the past 5 or 6 years, I have been helping the Chattanooga Christian School during their February Interim Fishing school for students. Matt Monahan is the teacher that has been heading this up and has wanted for the past few years to be able to fish with me and today, we finally got our schedules together. Matt wanted to learn how to fish off shore and what to look for with electronics. I'm no expert when it comes to electronics and I will admit that, but I have learned a few things that helps me find fish. Grin.

For the dog days of summer and late July, we had a great morning. We started just after daylight and quit about 10:25. We had the boat back on the trailer at 10:37. It is full moon Friday and the crappie were feeling their oats. However, I didn't get to fish my number one spot. A bass boat was sitting on the structure and was there 1.5 hours later when we came back to check it. Oh well, that is why you don't put all your eggs in one basket.

We started at Chadwick's rock and that won't mean anything to anyone but Dr Phil and we doubled on our first casts. This particular spot is 18 feet deep and is a big rock pile that may have just a little brush on it. Not much brush, but mostly rock. We had several keepers in this spot. I changed colors often today, and it didn't seem to matter. They hit every color that I tried, but the last one that I stuck with and the one that I caught most of my fish with was a Bass Assassin 2" Salt&Pepper on a 1/16 oz jig head painted white.

Matt, when he wasn't reeling in fish, was busy taking notes in his little notebook. That is the teacher in him, I guess. Grin.We ended up with 20 keepers and the best quality wise that I have had in a while. The longest one was a white crappie that was 13 5/8" long, but it wasn't the heaviest. We probably had 3 or 4 Black crappie that went over 13 and heavier than the white. We fished off shore all the time that we were out and even as I type this, I remember that we did hit one deep water dock and Matt caught a nice keeper under it, but it was the Lone Ranger.

We caught 9 juvenile crappie but no other species today. We fished mainly 3/32 oz jig heads and some 1/16 oz jig heads and different colors. Lights Out, Chartreuse Flash, Pearl Chartreuse, Lightning Bug, S&P, Licorice, and maybe another one or two colors. Chicken on a Chain produced a fish or two as well. As you can tell, we were changing colors often. It is important to know what the fish won't bite as well as what they will, in my opinion. Not all spots that we tried produced fish, but the ones that did gave us some nice fish. Matt lost what may have been the biggest crappie this morning by grabbing the line and trying to hoist it overboard when the fish flopped and broke his line. Lesson learned. If you want the fish in the boat, then use the net. That works about 90% of the time.

Originally Posted by Dave and Lynn

Dk you are one good crappie teacher.

D&L, I still remember the time that I got a pm from my friend, Bill, from over there who wanted me to come over and show them how to catch crappie from under those docks. I had never been on Tim’s before, but you should have seen the look on their face when I hooked a huge black nose crappie under a dock. Rick saw my hi-vis yellow 4 lb test line and thought that I would never get a single bite. We caught 14 that brief morning.