Choctawhatchee River

It's the time of year to point a crappie finger at the FL Panhandle west of Lake Talquin....namely the Choctawhatchee River.The Choctaw is about 100 miles west of Talquin. For the past few weeks I have been getting crappie reports of 'tearing them up' from the local bait shop. Based on my own experiences I'm thinking there may be a lot of small crappie being caught. 11/12 inchers + have been scarce for me but a few have been caught. A 14.5 managed to hook itself one day last week. All the Choctaw crappie are blackcrappie.

I primarily fish the Choctawhatchee River which starts in Alabama and runs about 100 miles down through the Florida Panhandle to Choctawhatchee Bay. It's a good crappie fishery this time of year in the the colder months although crappie are caught all year round. I think maybe the local's, including myself, seem to concentrate on bream in the spring until late fall and not much attention is paid to crappie.

Yesterday was opening day for hunting season so my regular fishing partner and I did our annual thing - a squirrel and fishing trip. On the fishing part we concentrated on crappie and caught a bunch of small fish. Some only 6 or 7 inches. I figure this means there was a good spawn. I know one thing for sure, the spring and summer produced the best bream fishing we have had in many years. I hope this good fortune translates to a banner crappie winter as well.

Our sojourn yesterday was really great. Overcast all day, no wind, rather mild temps all made for a perfect day in the woods and on the water. We had to work at it to find enough half decent keepers but managed 12 crappie in the box and 7 squirrels for the stew pot. We will be at it next week again and hopefully start finding some larger fish.

FishWalton EAT - SLEEP - GO FISHING

The big one in this photo is 12 inches.