We are taking crappies and bluegills from the thin water up here. Lately that has been a witching hour bite, along towards dusk. We aren't seeing much in the way of larger crappies, but they generally don't show up on these lakes until well after dark anyway, but the bluegills have a number pushing 8 inches, although many are smaller. We aren't seeing any male crappies coloring up here yet either.

What is very interesting is the number of fish that we are taking that seem to be waiting at the surface for the little jigs to drop right into their mouths. So many bites happen right as the lure hits the water. The bottoms here are also silty and generally mud; so it is very likely these fish are grazing on early insect hatches. They are all in good flesh with no paper thin fish coming in, not even the little ones. We have gotten to the point of taking the slack out of casts before the jig lands on the water's surface. If not bit right away; we also watch the first settle very closely. A lot of our sunfish bite, even the larger fish is little more than strange line behavior. Strong bite signal has been quite rare.

BTW there are very few snags or hangups in the waters we are fishing; so most of our tackle loss is on beatup plastic tails. Also we have to look for contact points and migration routes whose difference from their surroundings is very often little more than a matter of inches.

The water is shallow enough that we can often follow light or pearl colored tails and see them disappear when the bite happens. That is a blast.