Thread: First day out since the last cold blast

Went to Logan Martin today, put in at town and country about 7:30am. First thing I noticed was seagull poop all over dock and launch area and seagull diving from the launch area to about 50 yards out. Not a good sign last time i saw this (a few years ago)when i launched there were dead shad minnows everywhere. I could not see any dead shad but every seagull that dived came up with a shad.

Anyway, decided to go where I was doing pretty good about a month ago (even though my brain was telling me to go to the first place i normally go when water temps were down). Back at end of december and first of january the water temp was 48/49 and I was catching a limit almost every time out. Today the temp was 43 so I should have known better. Well I try the first place for about 90 minutes and not a bite or sign of a living creature anywhere. There was a nice size ball of crappie at the entrance but I could not get anything out of it.

Decided to try one more place before going to my normal cold spot and BAM caught 6 (4 keepers and 2 Dinks) within 20 minutes. Thought I was on to something but never got another one out of there. This place had a ton of shad action all my poles were bouncing thru them and i even hooked one, but all the fish i caught were scattered no where near shad. All caught on 1/16 oz black and chartreuse body.

Before leaving here to go to my final spot i decided to venture into shallower water (everything I fished so far was around 12 to 15 feet). For some reason the area was packed with cat fish and I caught 5 really fast then got out of there after a big one tangled up all my lines.

Finally about 11:00am I get to the spot I should of went and caught 2 really fast on the only baby garland monkey milk I had on, so I put a couple more on and found 10 more crappie and 5 bass over the next few hours (6 of the 10 were keepers). Again I saw no shad where I was catching fish and they were scattered in anywhere from 4 to 15 feet deep.

All in all not a terrible day considering. ended up bringing 12 crappie and 5 bass home. Fish were scattered for sure could never get any routine figured out. Going to give it a shot tomorrow if the weather holds!

Thanks for the info. I was down on Lay Lake on sunday fishing from the bank (Still don't have a boat or a yak ) and heard from the locals there that the crappie were starting to move a little more shallow, and that folks had been able to catch a few here and there, but not consistently. I got a couple bites that felt like crappie but no fish. Only caught a few catfish that were about 8 inches long and one decent bass, all on earthworms.