I flat smoked them today. Kept 15, all over 12", with some real brutes 14"-15" in there.

I put in at Sugar Creek at sunrise, and started long-lining under the bridge toward the mouth of the creek. I was marking tons of bait on the SI while trolling. First, I caught a small hybrid, then a double crappie, then finally a keeper over 11", but that was it once I got past the island. I quit trolling, and moved to the bow to do some timber dippin'. I went straight into the flooded timber area that has the buoys, on the left near the mouth of Sugar Creek, and began scanning with the Livescope.

I started spotting crappie on trees right away, but if I got too close, they would skedaddle. Also note, if you bump the top of the tree with the boat, they definitely skedaddle! I quickly learned to approach very stealthily, ease up, and cast from 10-15 feet away. Finally I started getting my jig to some fish, and wham, I started catching crappie. BIG crappie. Couple 15"s and 14"s, in there, all 12" or better. I'd catch 2-3 on a tree and move on, and inside those buoys, you sure don't have to go far to find another tree. Some were covered up with crappie, but they would all flee after I caught a few. Sometimes the spot-lock would scare them off if you weren't careful on your approach. I figured this out pretty quick, the Livescope is amazing.

I stopped keeping fish at 15, and I estimate I released around 20 more slabs. It seems the big crappie are NOT off the trees, as I only caught one or two small ones. Around 11 AM, the wind got up, and I wanted to miss rush hour, so I headed to the ramp. Got home around 2:30 PM. An amazing morning.

I was using hand tied jigs in gray, gold, and finally a kinda monkey milk chenille with chartreuse. The gold was the killer, those were tied on the JDM jigs Alphahawk uses (Daiwa gekkabijin), and I only changed colors after I hung up and broke off all 5 I had. I was using crappie nibbles and slab sauce, but mostly the nibbles. The crappie were hungry, and they would chomp the jig even though you could see a cloud of bait right there by them. I was using my 6'9" JDM UL rod with 2 lb test, some of the strikes were very light, but you could feel them on that rod, yes sir. Those big slabs were so fun to catch on that.

Oh, yeah, somewhere on the interstate between Cumming and the lake is my Jenko telescopic crappie net. I guess it blew out of the boat. That kinda bites. I had to lip all the fish, but they were all hooked well, those jigs are no joke.

I also spotted what sure looked like some huge catfish in those trees.

There were 3 boats under the bridge near the ramp, and I did see a few guys trolling. At the ramp when I put in, I met a guy who had a huge boatload of spruce tree branches he was putting out. He said he was mostly a dock shooter. He said he was too old school when I asked if he was on CDC. Nice guy.

I'll post some screen shots from the Garmin later. I was too busy to take pictures, but I took one of the bigger crappie:
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