With all of the medical issue threads and stories of Michigan members having health related concerns maybe this thread will help get everyone back to the lakes woods and streams as quickly as possible. Or at least thinking about it. We have not had any good fish stories for awhile and we are kind of due for one!

Brian and I launched a little after 5 PM and headed out to a spot that usually holds some pretty decent Crappies. The surface tempurature was a very warm 86 degrees. We figured that the fish would be in the deeper part of this particular area and concentrated our efforts over 16 feet of water. We were trying some newer techniques for us by using "Ron Spring's" perch rigs (similar to a Capp's and Coleman Rig) in chartreuse colors. Attached at the bottom was a 1/2 oz weight. We both chose to cast jigs with soft plastics on our other rods.

Both of us missed a few fish on the first pass (casting) and I missed several fish on my down rod tipped with minnows. Paying close attention I noticed that the tip would slack for a second and as I would set the hook, the fish would be gone. I figured the fish were coming up from the bottom, hitting the first minnow on the rig (above the weight) and then dropping the bait when they felt the weight of the sinker. I switched over to a standard hook and a small split shot about 8 inches above the hook. I no more than set it in the water when it got bit. When I set the hook, no one was home. This happened several more times before I finally hooked up with a below average crappie. This indicated that the misses on the casting rods and misses on the down rods where NOT due to gear or presentation but rather very small fish.

We worked out over some deeper flats that had good marks on the screen. Unfortunately, the bigger fish just were not hungry. As it got closer to dusk, we worked another area we had good success with in the past during the month of August. We did catch a few smaller crappies, some tiny perch (first time we ever caught perch here) and one nice sized crappie. We just could not find anything worthy of bringing home.

The bright side was that we went fishing, and that we didn't have to clean anything. The bugs were not bad, and it wasn't overly hot. The only down side was the lack of quality fish. I guess you can't have everything all the time!

Because I had no pictures to take (and trust me, I thought of a million different ideas) I'll leave you with a picture of Abby and her Fishing buddy!

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