Crappie by the hundreds-banner day on Morrison Lake

[spartannation]

As fishermen, we dream of the days when everything seems to work out perfectly. Perfect weather, perfect wind and fish that are more than happy to do their part. Today was one of those days for me and Jeff. We were on the water by 7:30, greeted by a thick fog and very light winds. The plan was to troll for crappie with 1/16 oz jigs and a variety of plastics sprayed with Slab Sauce until the sun burned the fog off then switch one rod to spinners tipped with red worms for bluegills. We fished the east basin and it didn't take long to put the first crappie in the boat.

The bite was similar to how it's been all summer, when we would mark schools of fish suspended 12' down, the bite would be hot and heavy. There were times when all four rods were being hit. There were also lulls when we wouldn't get bit but these didn't last long. The spinners with worms would get bit but we failed to connect on any gills with this set up. Oh well, the crappie bite more than made up for the lack of gills.

Neither of us wanted to keep any fish so we weren't really keeping track of how many we caught and released. At 11:30 I told Jeff that, just for fun, I was going to hit the clicker every time we caught a fish. There were times that it was hard to keep up. A lot of the fish we caught were small, 8 1/2" and under, but we caught some real nice fish, too. At 2:45 we put fish #100 in the boat. Most were crappie but we also caught some nice gills on plastics, too.

About 4:00 we decided to troll back to the launch and call it a day. We were at 134 on the clicker and I told Jeff I didn't think we would be able to hit 150 in one pass. Boy was I wrong. At 4:35, directly in front of the launch, fish #150 was landed and released. With what we caught in the first four hours, I can safely say we caught and released 200-250 fish today. Days like this don't come around very often and we both feel fortunate to have experienced it. We had to chuckle when, as we were trolling past a boat with three fishermen in it, one of them remarked that the fish weren't in the biting mood today. I can't imagine how it would be if they were in the mood.

Anything light colored, funky monkey, Tennessee shad, white/chartreuse, white/blue and silvers and light browns caught fish. Water temp was 81 and fish were caught in water from 14'-34'deep, 10-12 feet down, the bigger fish seemed to be over water 18' and deeper.
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