Thread: Not crappie, but still fun

This is gonna be kind of late, but I've been extremely busy here lately and haven't had a chance to post about my first night fishing experience. I went on the 8th of May during my break between finals and my summer job, and had a great time.

I'll go ahead and tell where I was, because I doubt it's much of a secret. I launched at Little Eddy Marina on Barkley, and puttered over under the bridge that's on the causeway going across the bay. Went under the bridge, and anchored about ten feet on the shallow side of the channel drop about 20 yards from the bridge. Set out a Q-beam light that I had just bought at Wally World for about 8 or 9 bucks. Got set up at about 9 and kind of just sat there situating stuff in the boat, and really started fishing about 10.

By 9:30 I had some sort of baitfish right under the light, probably 6 inches from the surface. By about 10:30, I started to notice gobs of what I assume were shad swimming under the boat. I had the light set out off the back of the boat, and I was fishing out of the front, at the edge of the light. It was really interesting watching these baitfish swim around the outer edges of the light -- they looked like they were on a merry-go-round...really was interesting. It got to the point where the baitfish were so numerous that they were causing the depthfinder to go haywire.

Well, about 10:40, I was jigging right next to the boat with a chartreuse tube with a blue flake in it, when I stuck a fish, but it got off. I lower back down, and pretty soon, stick another one....a good one. I thought I had to have the granddaddy of all crappie on. Rod was bent almost double, and drag was singing off. Then I thought catfish. But, I get the fish to the surface, and it was a white bass...about 17 or 18 inches long. A lot of people call 'em stripes, but they're white bass according to some things I've seen on the internet. They're the fish that can be caught in "jumps" during the hot summer on Kentucky and Barkley. Well, I ended up catching several of them, and they were all above 14 inches. It was a blast. Didn't see scale or hide of crappie all night, but stil had a GREAT time.

We used to night fish for them all the time when we had a place down there. Similar set up but we did it later in the year so were closer to deep water. Get there right at dark and get the lights going. Might catch a cat or crappie early then it always seemed that the "stripes" would move in ~11. Sometimes they would be just crazy until as late as 5am or may be just a couple hours. Lots of fun. We also found that current had a lot to do with the bite