Thread: Crankin the Big G 13 Jul

Took my favorite fishing buddy, my wife Margo, out Sunday morning at 0645 and we hit the Big G in an area where we found the crappie last weekend. We started to troll crankbaits about 0700 along a creek channel. The first fish that hit was a nice 17" bass that put up a great fight. The bass hit before I got all the lines out. The grass was pretty bad this trip and we had to make a couple of quick maneuvers to avoid big mats floating thru the area. So we spent a fair amount of time clearing lines during the trip. The crappie we caught were really nice sized whites, all 13-16", and they inhaled the bandit 300 crank baits. Mad cow and TN shad patterns were catching as well as some wiggle warts I tried out. All the baits were trolled 95-100' back of the boat at 1.6-20 mph. The fish seemed to like the slower speed of 1.6 over 1.8-2.0 mph The wind was blowing at 3-5 mph out of the SW. We ended up with 8 good fish and two bass one of the bass was a 3 1/2 lb'er that Margo caught. Here's a pic of Margo with big fish of the day, didn't take a shot of any of the crappie. (go figure?) Water temp was 85.8. Saw some fresh water shrimp in the grass that we were pulling off the baits on a regular basis. A nice to know contributing factor to the health of these fish. Threw the crappie on ice in a cooler as soon as they came in the boat, they stayed nice and firm and were beautiful when I filleted them out that afternoon. We fished until 1045 and beat the heat and boat traffic of the day. Not exactly killing 'em but at least we are finding a few.

I am talking about the surface grass. It runs down the line to the weight since the grass is so long. It is not like your typical floating leaves and "tree worms".