Surprise workday mid day trip

Got a surprise call from 870 about 9am saying he was through for the day and invited me to join him fishing as he has a busy schedule for the next week or so and probably won't have time to fish and hoped to get a trip in ahead of that. I did some juggling of my plans and projects and was able to make that work and played hooky from work. That doesn't happen often. Needs to happen more!
We met up, launched and had lines in the water about 11:30 on a lake we haven't fished since about this time of year back in '23. Air temp about 75, water about 74 with partly cloudy skies overhead. Breeze would build in a bit later but wasn't bad to start. Took a while to find the crappie but we did. This lake doesn't seem to grow them as large as some other waters we fish but provides lots of action from all species. 10-11" is a good fish here and 8-9" are willing biters. Here's a few that represent our take today.









Last trip, the bluegill about wore us out but today's trip was mostly crappie, along with a few perch and some smallish bluegill. No bass, no rock bass and only one pickerel, but that one was a beauty, just under 23", estimated about 3 lbs., and it came home with me. Gave me a heck of a tussle on 4# test line.



The captain of the boat put most of our keeper crappie on ice in the cooler, while I just kept plugging along with the undersize ones. We kept 2 nice perch that 870 scored, the pickerel and maybe 8-9 of our favorite quarry. Had a couple of big snapping turtles pop up and give us the once over. Tried to get a pic, it didn't come out too well. I'd give it about 16" or a bit bigger in diameter. Maybe 870 got it, I'm not sure.



Clicker reads 43 for the total for the day between the 2 of us, I'd estimate roughly 70% were crappie. We were getting baked and 870 had plans for the evening so we called a day about 2:45 and headed in.