We have a very large, shallow bay, mud bottom here in the City where sunfish and crappies sun and probably take insect hatches every spring.

Last evening it was hot, starting with sunfish about 5 pm and crappies later from about 7 until dark. Hot tail was a Mr Twister Micro Shad in pearl on a 1/48th jighead with a size 8 hook. We had no live bait along, and generally don't use it for panfish anyway. We were using line diameters of .006 and .008 which gave us decent casting distance. Bite was soft and barely noticeable, often no more than line acting funny, even on the bluegills. Line watching was absolutely necessary. We did not have strong enough bite to feel on probably 2/3 of the fish we caught last evening.

Bluegills were taken on a bottom retrieve with or without a bobber to hold the bait right at or on the bottom. Crappies were taken at the surface. It was most interesting to see them layer out differently, with the bluegills shutting off when the crappie bite was on and vice versa. It was also interesting to note that the sunfish bite started off with some little greenies, then switched over completely to bluegills, and at the very end a couple of pumpkin seeds showed up. All the sunnies were brightly colored, very pretty fish and all were quite thick across the back, even the little ones.

Nothing of any size really, but there was constant action for some three hours or so. We lost count again, but figure we put back easily some three limits (20) of sunfish each and a couple each of smallish crappies (10), too. Nice active evening. Every thing was released, which is what we always do here in the City. There are way more than enough other who harvest way more than enough of the fish population.

In case anybody wonders last evening balances out a couple of skunk outings in the past week... Truly it aint always that hot.

BTW the fishing docks are installed now on the Minneapolis Park Board lakes as are the sailboat docks. Lakes up here are way down, maybe 3 or 4 ' below normal, and more than that from last year at this time.