New Waters and New Techniques Pay Dividends

Saturday I decided to try a new lake to see if the crappie population would warrant a good day of fishing. Lately, I've been testing my ability to push jigs tightlining on a local lake a few minutes from home, so naturally upon launching on the new lake, I went right to it. I immediately found fish that were willing to bite, but they seemed to be grouped up as a smaller year class than what I would want to keep.

After a while, I fired up the Yammy and headed out to scout a bit. I found a mouth of a cove that ran about 16-18 feet deep, with rises on either side that turned into flats about 12 feet deep. Thinking that slow tightlining would take forever to cover the structural changes in the area, I repositioned my rod holders and tied on a couple of 1/8th oz Roadrunners with Garlands new 2 1/2" Swimmer Shad (I think that's the name) and Mr. Crappie's Joker, and decided to try some longlining. What a way to cover water and find active crappies!!

I made a regular cast for distance behind the boat and tried to keep the boat moving between .7 and 1mph, with .7-.8mph producing the best. I ran back and forth through the area for hours, picking up multiple fish on each pass. It turned out to be a great day on a new lake. I ended up keeping only ten fish, as there didn't seem to be a solid group of bigger fish to choose from. With a creel limit of 50, I'm assuming there are many small crappies in the lake, and from my sampling of the day, this may be close enough to accurate.