I took a friend of mine and his son out this morning. He has been out of the fishing business for some time and bought a boat last fall but with work and other obligations, hasn't got on the lake much. He wanted to get some pointers on fishing for gills and crappie so we headed out. They were due to be back home for a family event at 11 so time was an issue.

We hit some of my gill spots that were hot last week but with the lake level drop, they were poor at best. We got into a few good bulls and a couple of nice redears. I release all my female redears so the best of the bunch went back in.

I took my longline tackle so I could show them some of what I use when trolling jigs. We got back close to where I had picked them up near the appointed time and hit a school of keeper crappie in about 12 feet of water. They took their catch and headed out and I decided since I was already there and had left my cell phone at home, I would try to catch a few crappie for my friend's freezer.

I spent the next 3 hours trolling drops in 10 to 15 feet of water, catching one here, a couple more there. I ended up filling out a limit that was a couple of fish in the 12-13 inch range and a couple that were 10 squeakers. The rest were in between. All of the fish were spawned out but were hitting aggressively.