Thread: TARP size White crappie 10/24/18

My daughter and son in law came down this morning and had breakfast with us and after a little shopping trip to the grocery store, suddenly I had a crappie itch, so I asked Wanda if she would take me to a ramp near our home and launch me for an afternoon fishing trip.

I launched and fished alone alone for an hour or so and then Candi texted me and said that she was just getting back in town from Gatlinburg and I told her where I was fishing and offered my back seat for a couple of hours.

Right after she sent the text, I caught a 14.75” White crappie that I thought for a while was a bass as hard as it was fighting. I sent her the text and she said she was coming to the ramp. Grin.

We fished deep brush off shore and caught several fish, mostly 9 to 10 inch fish, but we did manage a few keepers. I had another over 12” and I think maybe we had 6 or 7 keepers total, but we released most of the fish including the big girl. She will weigh 2.5 lbs in February. I caught 9 crappie off a new bamboo hotel that I put out about 3 months ago.

On my first stop before Candi texted me to tell me that she was back in town, I went to a new bamboo hotel that I placed on the main river channel and I was a little concerned that maybe the 100,000 plus flow rate that we had for a few days because of the flooding that we had, had washed the hotel away, but it didn’t. I spotted it on my graph and it had a school of spotted bass in it. I had 4 hookups, landed two, had the fish on the first cast jump off at the boat after a spirited fight. The last one broke my 4 lb test line. I should have retired the line.

Wind out out of the north and nearly whitecapping and water surface temp was 68.7 when I launched at 2:30 and was the same when I quit at 4:30.

Thanks for picking me up at the ramp. I must have still had my head in the Smokey mountains you forgot to report that I only caught a few fish while you put on a clinic. Always a great time fishing with my teacher!