Trip Report, Madison County Lake

[Ditch Basser]

I finally got out to Madison County Lake today in my kayak. Fished from 10:00AM till 3:00PM. Called Z-man and he drove out and meet me on the lake. Not my most successful outing, but not a bust either. I caught 75 Crappie total for the day, almost all were 8 to 9 inches long. I kept 4 that were 10 inches of larger and probbaly lost another 4 that would have been over 10 inches. They were all Black Crappie, thick and health with no signs of heat stress from the warm summer weather. All were on the marked brush piles around the lake, 5 brush piles in particular held fish for me though my fish finder showed fish on all the brush piles. The fish were hitting my bait 6 to 8 feet down in 10 to 14 feet of water. I tried Marabou, Mr Twister, Bobby Garland, tube jigs just about everything I could think of and every color combo. The 1/16oz white Marabou jigs worked best for me, but they still seemed to be biting light and far between. All the fish I caught were from vertical jigging structure and all picked up the jig, but no thump. You’d see the line go slack on the fall and have to set the hook. I only got a hookup maybe 50% of the time and still lost a lot at the boat, fish would be hooked out on the edge of their lips.

Fish were in several year classes with the 8 to 9 inch group being 90% of the fish. Next spring should be great with most of those fish growing to 10 inches over the winter.

[droptine]

Ditch, I've been catching the smaller fish spider rigging and the bigger fish trolling cranks. The small fish ain't much for keeping but they sure are fun to catch.

[Ditch Basser]

The lake was a little bigger than I expected and the wind got up more than it was suppose too also. I had planned to spider rig, but never found any fish except on the brush piles. I'd see a fish sometimes between 8 to as deep at 22 feet up by the damn put nothing consistant so I didn't have a depth to work. I had hoped for a creek or channel to follow from shallow to deep put didn't find one. I'm sure with several trips and getting to know the lake that there are lots of nicer fish to catch. With this being my first trip I was just glad to catch any!

The lake looked like it gets a lot of fishing pressure also.