A buddy and I went for a quick trip after work today. We got the lines in the water a little after 5pm. The water temp was around 59 degrees. We were pulling jigs in a large cove that has lots of grass. Mitch and I found lots of fish yesterday morning in 8-10 FOW so we started there first. Yellow bass were lighting us up. We were moving around the east side of the cove when we got our first crappie. We trolled 1/2 mile or so and picked up a few. We caught fish in water from 3-8’ deep. As we worked the east side I found a little protected area where the water was a little over 61 degrees. There was more crappie in that area and we had 11 solid keepers in the boat at dark. We talked about how the fish shut down at sunset just like they did in that same area last spring. I told my buddy that it didn’t make sense. I know guys fish under the bridges here all night and catch crappie all during the night.

It took me a talking through this and then I decided to reel in my jigs and try fishing very shallow even though we had moved to an area in 8 FOW. Less than 30 seconds later I had a crappie on. After that we headed back to an area we found that was the warmest. We both put on black jig bodies and were fishing with 5-6 feet of line out. We were pulling single 16’s with straight tailed jigs in 3-5 FOW while trolling .8mph with barely enough line out to keep our jigs a foot under the surface. We got on them pretty good. We fished until 10:30 and wound up with 35 quality keepers. We never got the measuring board out. Anything under 10 1/2 or so we threw back. 90% of the fish we caught were beautiful dark males.

My partner had his head lamp with him. I had to use the flashlight on my phone, stuck in my shirt pocket just to have enough light to barely make out my poles.

Pulling jigs at night is an absolute blast! I will be rigging up an elevated flood light of some sort before the next full moon.






There is an awesome story to go with this particular yellow bass. It’s too late and I’m too tired to type it tonight. If I hadn’t had a witness I wouldn’t even bother to type it tomorrow. LOL