Thread: Cotaco Creek, 7 Nov 2016 (A blessing)

God is good! Days like this don't happen often. Had the opportunity to enjoy some quite time this beautiful morning. Arrived at Triana to launch at sunrise. Water temp stayed a consistent 69 degrees. No current the entire morning. Winter drawdown is definitely here. The water is low. I used 1/24 oz plain jigs.

Fished a few minutes in Indian Creek. Landed 4 Black Crappie in less than 10 minutes. Bait was BG Monkey Milk.

Moved to Cotaco Creek. Fished a few laydowns. The Crappie were not holding tight to structure. They were scattered around the laydowns, but the bite was consistent about 6-8 feet down. Bait was BG Monkey Milk and Crystal.

I tried a Cotaco Creek side tributary for a while. Moved as far back in the tributary I could until I could not cross one of the laydowns. I was able to cast to the next laydown...about 20-25 feet away. The bite was on! The black Crappie were holding tight and were bunched together on this laydown. Water depth was 3-4 feet. Bait was BG Monkey Milk. I switched to BG Pink Pearl...the crappie weren't interested in this color. But the bluegill nibbled the heck out of the Pink Pearl with no hook ups. I switched to BG Glacier, and the bluegill devoured it. Switched back to BG Monkey Milk...no more Crappie bites. My guess is the bluegill activity with the BG Glacier shut down the crappie.

Moved back to the Cotaco Creek main channel around 0900, which coincided with the wind showing up, and fished one of my favorite underwater structures in about 10 feet of water. The bite was consistent. And, the size increased from 8-11 inches early in the morning to 12-13 inches. I tried BG Monkey Milk, Crystal, Blue Ice, Pink Pearl, Glacier, and Hologram Ghost. Today I did not use one of my other go-to baits...Blue Thunder. By far, Monkey Milk was the Crappie bait of the day.

Summary: Fished from sunrise to 1030. Total Crappie = 45...last one of the day was another 8 inch fish. Big fish was 13 inches and weighed 1lb, 3oz. Intended to keep 10 Crappie for dinner. Found another pleasant boater with three fishing. They had one Crappie. I gave them the 10 I kept. Probably caught 15-20 bluegill and one white stripe. Other than the 10 Crappie I gave away, all others were released.

What a great day. Sorry for the sideways pictures.

I usually limit myself to 15 right now. I filled my dad's freezer last month and half a limit of 10 inch Crappie makes a meal for my family (plus leftovers the next day for me). I just really enjoy single pole on laydowns this time of year.