The day started out bright but real windy but by 4:30 when we got on the water, it was overcast, chilly and still windy. On the way back in along the shoreline, a couple of guys said they had caught a couple. No fast bite, but that still told us the crappies were still up. We went to the back of the bay where we left off last time, but it was a dead sea. We moved up along the shoreline a bit and started to hunt. Eventually we found fish, but they didn't want a retrieve of any kind. The first came from letting the jig lay on the bottom and then just reeling up enough slack to give it a twitch. I had gone down in size hook on the 32nd oz jig to a size 8 and downsized the tail to a pearl inch and a half Southern Pro stinger. That took a couple putting us on the spot, but I kept hanging up, losing my jig and having to retie even with the smaller hook. There was enough wind that line control was pretty miserable. My buddy put out a small bobber about 3 feet over a 2 1/4 inch tail and started getting some real soft bite and catching some crappies. I followed suit with a 2" Galand Baby Shad. We let the wind move the bobber over the surface only reeling about enough to keep contact with the bobber and ended up releasing something like 2 or 3 dozen small to medium crappies over the next couple of hours. Tonight they did not want any kind of horizontal retrieve. The bite was so light that even the tiny bobbers were not taken under. We got so that we set the hook on any kind of extra pressure on the line when the bobers just looked to be acting a little strange. Only one sunny and no sunny nibble at all this evening and no bonus fish, except for one 3" largemouth that must be so stupid that it will never grow up...

Interestingly we found the fish on one presentation, but caught most of the rest on quite a different one, using the larger size of tails. For all that fronts are moving through including a real drop in temperature, the crappies were still up shallow, although not as shallow as the last time we were out when the weather was much warmer.

Nothing fast this evening and we had to work pretty hard for our crappies, nothing big either, but the numbers were satisfying despite the weather, once we found them. It was a really soft bite this evening, too, even for crappies and there was just too much wind for a waggler float, and they still wanted a dead slow, essentially stop, presentation.

We followed our normal practise and released everything, which is what allowed the numbers.