Thread: Tillery 8/23

We went back to Tillery for the first time since the night stalk. We took our adult son along, since he has been wanting to go and has actually been on his good behavior as of late. . We fished in the same area that most of us did during the night stalk. Fish were holding between 15- 18 feet in 32-45 feet of water. We anchored out to start and caught a few, then the bite turned off. We tried Drifting the way Lynn Cook had explained to us and that was the ticket.

Was a slow go of it, but a nice one would take the bait about the time we would decide to call it a night. Then we would hang around for a bit, another one would come in the boat as we were deciding to leave. I guess all the storms going around the Tillery area had the bite off some. We were throwing all 8 inch fish and some 9 inch fish back. We would only keep these guys if they had been badly hooked or if they had some nice meat on the bones.

We got on the Lake around 9pm and pulled all rods out and headed for the exits at 7am. We kept 20 something crappie. Don’t remember exactly and too tired to go count right now. We had several over 13 inches. As usual the wife caught the biggest crappie of the night, but not the biggest fish. I won that one fair and square.

I was seeing some big fish near the bottom, and remembering what Gobbler had explained to me about sonar returns, I decided to go catfishing with a 9 foot Mr. Crappie Graphite rod loaded with 6# test line and a light wire hook served up with a fresh minnow. Landed this guy after a nice fight. In my wildest fishing dreams, I would never have thought I would get this guy in the boat. I think I have finally figured out how the drag on my reels work. He did tangle every single line we had in the water at the time. Despite that we tossed him back after measuring him and picture time. We could not figure out how to weigh him on the boat, so any weight estimate would be a guess entirely.More accurately, we could not figure out where to hook him up to the little Bass Pro Shop analog scale that would not harm him.



Will post pics of crappie after sleepy sleepy time.

Yes, sir - that's commitment right there....all night chasing crappie! Great job and great report. Thanks for sharing!