Went to the way north end of Lanier on Chestatee arm this morning, got there at daybreak. Started long-lining, but wasn't even getting a bite where they were last week, so I kept on going into a new cove off the creek. This area is loaded with bait. While I was trolling, I was keeping one eye on the SI, and one eye on the rods, and I marked a few trees holding fish. As I got into the cove further, I found a cluster of trees loaded with fish, and about that time caught a crappie. I trolled back and forth across the trees, finally getting 2 keepers on one pole. Too slow a bite trolling to keep me interested, so...

I had just upgraded my bow graph from the Garmin 93sv+ to the Em ultra 102, and was anxious to try it out with the Livescope, so I quit trolling and spot locked over a tree with fish, and started vertical jigging. Down went a hand-tied jig with a nibble on it. Instant thump. Then another. I was catching them just about as fast as I could sink the jig down the 20-25 feet, but most were under 10", like 8"-9". I started scanning and moving from brush pile to brush pile/tree, catching some on every one, but looking for bigger fish. I caught so many fish I lost count, but I ended up keeping a dozen crappie over 10". I could see my jig (1/32 USA and 1.5g JDM) and sometimes could see a fish intercept the jig, the line would stop sinking, and I'd yank into a fish. Very cool. You still have to wait for the thump, it will fool you sometimes when fish are all over the jig.

I was using my own hand tied jigs with crappie nibbles, and the colors were the silver/gray with flash and gold/chart with flash. At one point I downsized to a BG Itty Bity swim'r in blue ice and caught some on that, including my biggest fish of the day, also with a nibble.

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Hey, I'm finally figuring out how to catch crappie on this lake!