How Long is Too Long Without a Bite!

I think my biggest mistake is spending to much time at unproductive spots trying to make fish bite. Especially if I can see them on the graph. With that said, a few weeks ago we won a tournament in a 60 boat field fishing a spot that was about 40 yds square. We found good fish in that spot the day before so we put all our eggs in one basket and went for it because nowhere else was producing for us. We fished that small spot for the 5 hrs we had to fish and caught 21 keepers. That's about 1 fish every 15 minutes. Our bag was enough to win by 1/100th of a pound.

If I'm at a spot where I'm marking a lot of fish I will give it about 10 minutes or so without a bite before I move on,but normally I look for some action pretty quick or I'm moving on to the next spot.

I usually give it about 10 minutes and then move to another Crappie Condo (brush pile , stake bed, ect) . i fish all depths top to bottom bumping cover . Then if no takers or just dinks I move on . I fish a 1/8 oz tube jig with a 11' jig pole with 8 lb line almost 99 % of the time . Here they bite purple/chartruse or they just not biting . Just need to get a pattern on depth , type of cover and how tight they are holding . Sometimes if bait gets near cover they hammer it and other times you need a slower presentation with bait hitting the cover. Because they refuse to move far to take a bait at times .
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It all depends if I know what's going on. If I know where they are so post to be I move fast. I never fish one spot more than 30 minutes.

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If I'm by myself and just killing time, I'll fish a spot from every possible angle before I move on. I'll try all my favorite colors while doing so. I've found that they'll hit from only one direction and on just one color too. Sometimes it may take close to an hour to figure them out BUT I'm retired and can kill as much time as I care too. If you have to get off the water at a certain time, this isn't for you. :dono

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Originally Posted by chaunc

If I'm by myself and just killing time, I'll fish a spot from every possible angle before I move on. I'll try all my favorite colors while doing so. I've found that they'll hit from only one direction and on just one color too. Sometimes it may take close to an hour to figure them out BUT I'm retired and can kill as much time as I care too. If you have to get off the water at a certain time, this isn't for you. :dono

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Gotta have that patience to kill time.

This is a hard question to answer. There have been times when I sat way to long waiting for the fish to bite and get nothing to show for it. Then there have been other times that I wished I just stuck it out and stayed where I was catching a fish every hour instead of burning fuel to go to some distant place just to find someone already there or the fish not biting there at all. But normally I will stay with a spot if I know there are crappie on it for at least 30 minutes to give them time to settle down. Sometime pulling a fish out of a group of fish will spook them. Sometimes the fish are moving and will be on and off the spot you are fishing. The main thing is it is hard to leave biting fish to go find other biting fish. Like Ketchn said when he is bank fishing he is more patient and sometimes that pays off in the boat also.

For me, it depends on how big the "spot" is and whether it's a specific "spot" or a trail or bank full of them. Each "spot" will likely get several casts, not only from different angles but also at different depths (and maybe even different speeds).

I used to think that I was spending no more than 30mins at a spot/area before moving, if I hadn't caught any decent fish from it ... when, in reality, I was actually there two to three times longer than that. I'm a line watcher, not a clock watcher :biggrin

I single pole 99% of the time and keep my bread and butter jigs on 3 different poles. I'll fish em top to bottom and if I don't get hit I'm gone within 5-10 mins. If they're not biting on one top they usually are on another. Sometimes I think I move to much, but I'd rather find the active fish than try to coax one into biting.


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