Got on some spawining slabs.. new PB crappie, too

[jawjatek]

There's a little county water reservoir near me, electric-only, no development, 380 acres, beautiful, even has bald eagles hanging about. I've caught a few crappie in there, even though the guys working there say they were never stocked, the crappie in there are from when they dammed the creek. There are a ton of bass, and a lot of pressure for those. I pleasantly discovered it had big shellcrackers and some huge crappie, but until this week I've never caught more than one or two scattered slabs at a time.


I went in my Nucanoe kayak Wed morning to try out a new JDM rod and see if the shellcrackers were on bed yet. I took only the UL gear. On the way to a spot where a creek flows into the lake and I was planning to fish for bream, I stopped to throw a trout magnet on a small Daiwa JDM (1.5g) jig and see If I could catch a small bass to put my new rod thru the paces. What bit the jig was a large slab crappie.

2 hours later I was still cramming slabs into an overstuffed Playmate cooler, and taking out the ice to make room for more fish.

When the bite slowed on the trout magnet, I tied on a 1/32 hand tied jig by Perry Pippinger at Moonshine Jigs, a gray color with tinsel called "Elmo" named for Richard Gene. I caught a new personal best crappie, 15.5" long, and weighed later 2 lb 4 oz.



I kept 17 including he big one, and had no more room in the cooler, so I caught & released about 10 more, and called it a day.


This morning I went back, and the crappie were still there, so I caught a few more.. again on the trout magnet with JDM jig. Later I went looking for bream and caught this:

It was tricky getting him released, he was angry and striking at my kayak, but I managed to get the hook out of his foot with my pliers without getting chomped. He was about 2' dia, and it was lucky getting him to the boat on 4 lb mr crappie.

I went looking for more spawning crappie and found 'em right before I went home. I marked a waypoint, yes sir I did, you betcha. I will be back there ASAP. I ended up with another fine mess of SLABS.


I had a long cleaning session today and ended up re-stocking on crappie filets for a while, I took some of the odd pieces and fried em' up for a sammich. I'm getting better with the new Bubba electric filet knife, but I botched a couple getting the hang of it.