Thread: '22 season has been pried open finally

A late start to the '22 season but it's officially underway for me as of today. Still had a pretty good wind but ventured out to see what I could find. Air temp at 78 and the water was 60-61 when I launched about 5:10 or so. I clipped on my 3 favorite Southern Pro Stingers and headed off, fighting the wind from the northeast, for the most part. It kept switching around from north to east. Took about 30 seconds to get the skunk out of the boat with the first crappie of the year, a 9 incher or so. Tennessee shad color worked well to start while trolling; that's what this one fell for.



That would be the first of many tonight; most of the crappie I landed were of the 9-10" class.....and I was lucky enough to land a bunch of them. A couple may have been near 11" but no monsters were boated. I was surprised and happy to land better than 2 dozen of them over the next 2 1/2 hours. Most of them came single poling, casting in toward the shallower water and letting it fall over the drop. They just couldn't resist that fall! Quite a few had their courtin' colors on, too.



Slow retrieve on the cast was critical; single poling was more productive than trolling tonight. The bluegill also found the road runner with Stinger tail too attractive to resist.



Most of my single poling was with the roadrunner and it didn't disappoint.

The wind began to ease off about 6:30 and it was pretty much dead calm at 7:30 when I left them biting. Beautiful evening to be on the water; I was glad I went.
Along with the crappie, I scored about a half dozen bluegill and one each of the perch, pickerel and bass.