Stink - You were overdue for that trip glad you caught a bunch:)
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Stink - You were overdue for that trip glad you caught a bunch:)
Your welcome Stink! We struck out on spot #1. Moved to the other area and I saw what looked to be a crappie feeding on the surface, made a long cast across the channel and wham! Stink & I quickly moved over to the other side and began to cork/jig the deeper side of the visable brush, it was every cast for an hour! Pink/pump./chart. Beavertails set @ 1.5' Stink, how do you rate those weighted floats?
They sold me, I like em. Putting them on my shopping list for my next run to the tackle store. I like the action they give the jig, make it more active and life-like.
I waited til this morning to clean the fish, now have 3 quarts of beautiful crappie filets, thanks again Leland.:D
Me my wife and cpd21 went out fished yesterday evening on the north end around Emerald bay. We fished from 5:30-dark and caught 28 keepers had 4 fish over 13 inches and 1/2 of them were black crappie. We spider-rigged every point we could find that was in 5-10 fow. The hot colr was black/pink beaver tails with a pink 3/16th crappie pro head. We trolled points for about a 1/2 a mile and caught fish the entire time. We caught a bunch of little ones as well. My wife caught all the big ones, and had the fish of the day up out of the water and it got off, needless to say she got a little excited! LOL
You are a smart guy EB telling on here wife caught all the big ones that surely will lock up another fishing trip for you in the future !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yup I am hoping! But we gave her a hard time about loosing the hog! We caught some of the prettiest big black crappie you ever seen, you would have never believed they come from the north end. They looked like they come staight out of Gibson. I love catchig them, that's why I started to fish porum and dutchess a little more last summer. But we are seeing more and more through out the lake. EB
I have read that they actually overtake the white crappie over time in lakes that they are able to establish themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eufaula boy
For what it's worth,Quote:
Originally Posted by Stinkfinger
A friend and I were fishing Elm Point area a couple of weeks ago and caught what we thought were some really nice sized spawned out females. They were thin in the belly and white like you would expect a female to be. Later when we cleaned the fish that were still alive in the live well, we notice we had some large males, black spawning colors, that we could not remember that we had caught. We realized that they were the fish that we thought were spawned out females. The females that we cleaned still had eggs but my freind said they didn't look right. The next day a was talking to Todd about where I had been fishing and the fish we had caught and he told me that area had been hot a couple of weeks earlyer and that most of the fish had finished spawning. I mentioned the big males turning color and the females having funny looking eggs and he said "that was common this time of year for the males to turn colors in the live well and the females retain eggs all year long. They never drop all their eggs. I catch fish year round and the females always have eggs." If you think you caught a spawned out female with no eggs check closer for the male sperm sack, the little white sacks, and let me know what you find.
A couple of days latter my friends and I were cleaning fish at Todd's store and he showed us the difference between not yet spawned and female fish that had finished spawning with eggs. The finished spawning fish with eggs had lost that bright yellow and bloody look.
This might need to be put into a thread of it's own.
Headed back out to Eufaula today with my 77 yr old dad and what a time we had. Oh I bet you thought I was going to say with all the fish we caught. Well we did manage 23 keepers all over 10" and biggest 14.5". The wind is what we a had time with. He hit the Longtown Area thinking I might get out of the wind a little better. Caught around 75 total so the bite wasn't near as good as yesterday. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of our fish today. Mom and dad were in a hurry to get home before any storms from out west showed up.
Well Crappie Jiggin, I almost went to Bixby Creek today, but with the high wind reports, I went to Graves Creek to stay out of the wind.
Got there about 11 a.m. and there were only 3 truck/trailers in the parking lot.
Water temps was 63 when I got there and 70 when I left. Water was really muddy, even up the creek.
Motored down to the mouth and did some cork and jiggin and picked up two nice Blackie males. Meanwhile, two of the 3 boats were headed home. They both said they had some little ones but that the fish pretty much weren't biting.
Hung around a little while longer and headed back up the creek. Too windy near the mouth.
Switched to slow trolling with a jig rod in each hand.
Hit my ole Honey hole and picked up 5 fish including one a tad over 1 1/2 pounds.
One thing I started noticing were that the black crappie were next to the banks in less than two feet of water. They preferred 3" slab slayers in the Cajun Cricket colors.
I was catching white crappie out deeper in 4 to 6 ft of water on Black/Pink Beavertails.
I found that interesting!
Ended the day with 10 Crappie, 2 Black Bass (a 3.2 lb one and a 2.1 lb one) and a Sandie.
One of the Crappie had white eggs in her and the two largest had spawned out I'm thinking (both had a very small amount of eggs in them, maybe the size of your pinky fingernail)
The others were males.
Hopefully these storms will raise the lake level just a tad. We could use a little water.
Yeah; when we had them on the stringer they were turning darker, that's only normal. I always look at the anal area and usually the more swollen and red is normally a female? Stink cleaned them and can reply to this for more accuracy. I've been fishing crappie on the big-E for 35 years and believe me you will catch them shallow LATE, in what the old timers refered to as the "False Spawn".
Went out again today. Decided to hit around I-40 bridge and gentry creek area. Fished with the go to bait agian 1/8 red head road runner, pumpkin/chartruese tripple ripple. Well all these were caught out of an area of about 20 yards. Could not find any other fish any where. Fished from 1pm to 5pm.
http://i750.photobucket.com/albums/x...ydro53/002.jpg
Nice mess of crappie, CJ. Thanks for sharing the picture.
Would you call that a sweet spot?Quote:
Originally Posted by crappie_jiggin
Thanks for the report.
We fished today and had 62 keepers. It was a nice day not much wind so that allowed us to fish anywhere we wanted. We spider-rigged every point we could find next to a channel. Fished 14 points all day long and caught fish on everyone of them, the pattern on the point varied a little. We either had to be fishing 3-4ft deep or 5-6 moving in a zig zaging. Most of the big fish bites would happen when the baits started or stopped.The fish were real spread out today, we caught a few here and there. I think I am going to try some long-line trolling tommorrow. I will post a report on that technique. EB
Sissy and I fished yesterday morning and the bite was fast, we had a dozen or so and here came the rain. We headed home for lunch and watched the weather, then headed back out. Caught most of them on jigs @ 2' on floats and the rest on minnows @ 4' biggest was a 14" and we had a few that were eye hooked or swallowed hooks, ended up with 42. The lake is on a rise now and rip-rap seems to be holding them good right now.
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/l...dpics001-1.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/l...dpics002-1.jpg
We still caught some black as coal males close to the bank with their bottom tail lobes worn off....looks like we have a good spawn this year for the next crop.:D
LR, thanks for the good report and sharing the pictures!! Nice mess of crappie!
We fished yesterday from 10:30-5:00 and had 70 keepers. 20-25 were over 12 inches long and the biggest was 14.5 inches. We spider-rigged every point we could find for the majority of the day. We fished 3-6ft deep in 5-10 FOW. Black and pink eaver tails with a big pink 3/16th crappie pro jig was the hot color. We also long-lined for about an hour at the end of the trip with black and pink strollers and caught a dozen or so with that technique. I was able to show a couple of people some different ways to catch crappie, especially in the post-spawn. the fish were thumping the baits all day long. So don't put your poles up after the spawn. Because all the fish do is EAT when they come off the beds! Good fishing! EB
Once the fog burned off and I got thing done around the house, I decided to slip off to Gentry Creek and see how things were going.
Got on the water a little after 3 p.m. and headed West. I was just looking around and using my Side Imaging to look at a few places that I was curious about.
Didn't find anything that really excited me so I headed to the I-40 bridge and started Spider Rigging 8 to 20 fow. Picked up a few dinks on the South East side.
Then moved in closer and started jigging water in the 4 to 8 foot range and I started getting bit by Channel Cats. I guess the water has warmed up enough to get them thinking about spawning. Caught 3 nice Channel Cats and 2 - 11 to 12" Crappie.
At one time I got hung up on something. I finally pulled the object loose to find that it was someone's fishing rod and reel! I had hooked the next to last eye on the rod. It was a cheap spincasting rod/reel combo, but I would have loved to heard the story of how it got there!
Headed back to the ramp and decided to try a cove where I'd caught some Crappie before. Couldn't find them in the shallows so I hit the two points at the mouth and picked up 4 good keepers including a 13 3/4". This fish was about 8 ft deep over 15 ft of water. Most others came fishing 6 to 8 ft down in 8 to 12 fow. The dinks were active and I caught them at about every depth.
The water temp ranged from 70 to 76. The coolest was along the rip rap at I-40. Go figure.
Ended up with 6 Crappie and 3 Channels for the afternoon.
Thats funny Don a couple years back I also caught a rod and reel off of 40 it was a bait caster and bass rod but was to far gone to be a real prize!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My Grandpa snagged an old pistol out of Eufaula one time.
Decided to get up early and drive a little while down to Crowder and see if I could find a Crappie or two. I'm told you can sometimes catch them every now and then down there :rolleyes:
I was on the water by 7:30 a.m. and there was little to no wind. The water was muddy and the temp at the Crowder Park was 72.
Decided to head off to Blocker Bridge and give it a try first. I noticed there were boats on the South side so I decided to start there a little ways down the rip rap on the West side.
As I was trolling North, boats kept coming and cutting me off. Just pulling up and anchoring or simply using their TM to hold their boat in place.
I looked over on the North side and there was no one over there. Since me and the Wife had caught some good ones there a few weeks ago, I went over there.
I noticed that the current was really ripping through there. But as I worked my way around the rip rap, I noticed that there was an eddy current. I started working this area and I started catching Crappie.
To be honest, it was some of the best fishing I've had in a long time. As long as I stayed in slack water or in the eddy current, I caught Crappie. Get near the main current and I would catch Sand Bass :eek: :mad: :(
I knew what was going to happen any minute. It took about 15 minutes for the first boat to show up from the other side. Fortunately I don't think they understood what was happening because they were fishing up current and catching sand bass.
I used my TM to stay next to the bank/rip rap and was catching Crappie at a pretty ridiculous pace. I happen to look up and there were two guys in a bass boat coming up on me casting what looked like RoadRunners. I thought I'd be polite and let them troll by so I moved my boat out of the way.
They wasted no time moving their boat where I was and parked there! :eek: :mad:
No good deed goes unpunished I thought to myself.
So I worked the other areas of the rip rap. Finally the pulled back from the bank aways and I trolled through the area I'd been sitting, picking up more Crappie. I started going further and further out away from the rip rap and I was still catching Crappie!
I was fishing 6 to 12 ft down using a 3" Slab Slayer in Cajun Cricket and a 2" Yum Bevertail in Blk/Chtr. I don't know why, but I couldn't buy a bite on a blk/pnk beavertail today.
I kept moving further out over 30 to 40 fow, still fishing 6 to 12 ft and I was still catching Crappie! (as long as I stayed in the slack water)
I heard something behind me and I looked up and it was my friends in the Bass boat! :eek: Apparently they saw me catching Crappie out from the rip rap and decided to join me out there.
Now there were more boats showing up and it was getting crowded really fast.
Finally at 11 a.m. I had had enough and counted the fish in my Livewell. I had 34. There were now 5 to 6 boats in that small area and it seemed everyone was just trying to horn into any area they could.
I headed to Rock Creek to finish my limit. It took nearly an hour, but I finally caught 3 more keepers around the bridge.
All in all, I probably caught nearly 100 fish today. For every keeper I caught, I probably caught 3 or 4 dinks. At one point, I had caught a one pound Sand Bass and netted him, When I pulled him into the boat, a 13 inch Crappie was on the bottom hook! :D
I had multiple fish on at the same time on several different occasions.
It was truly a rare day for me. It's not often I find fish stacked up like that. It was being at the right place at the right time during the perfect conditions. If it hadn't been for the inconsiderate boaters, it would have been a perfect day. I bet Todd H. puts up with this crap all the time.
But it's hard to get PO'd too much when you have a cooler full of Crappie. :)
Most of the Crappie were 10" to 13" I had 5 over 14".
Here's a pic of my 37 "Crappie" friends in the cooler
http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/a...rcrappie01.jpg
And here's one of my Office, getting ready to go to work...LOL
http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/a...donsoffice.jpg
It's a "Crappie" job but someone has to do it!
BTW, there was a guy fishing on the North end, East side about halfway down. He parked his boat on the bank and was fishing out the back of it. He was throwing a cork with a baited hook using shad. He was catching some pretty nice Blue cats in the 4 to 8 lb range. Even after another boat came and anchored up within yards of the guys corks!
Looks like a great day even with all of the company. One question though. Where did you get the desk that's in your office?
Great report Don; Sorry all those boats crowded you...sometimes thats just part of it. Anytime you can find current like that the crappie are there somewhere. But as you found out so is everything else!
OkieDon, although I throw a roadrunner and have shown it on here, I promise you it wasn't me crowding you out. I have been at work and plus I would never do that to anyone who is catching them like you were.
I hate it when others crowd me out and therefore I would never to it to anyone else. I mean if someone has located them and is yanking them out as you were, I would get a little upset and might not have kept my mouth shut.
Great post and great catch there OkieDon. Keep up the good work and hope to see ya out there some time.
@ Slavenst,
I got the table at Academy a while back. I got tired of using a cutting board on my tailgate. I still do that if I only have a few fish, but when I have quite a few, I use my table and a comfortable chair. It's a little high, so I just push it down into the ground a little.
Here they are at academy. Blackstone fillet table
@ LR/Jiggin'
You know, it was kinda pathetic to watch those guys trying to crowd their boats into that one little area. Looked like kids fighting over free candy.
I've actually seen boats follow Todd around. All these type of people care about is catching a fish. They don't bother trying to figure out why Todd went to the place to begin with.
I've watched Todd fish and once he leaves (which is usually pretty quick if he's not catching fish), I've ran over the spot with my electronics to try and figure out what he looks for in a point, because that's nearly all I ever see him fish, points. I've come to a conclusion that it's a point with a good break into deep water. I plan on fishing with him this year and I'm going to ask him about that!
At the end of the day, we're suppose to be out there enjoying ourselves. That's kinda hard to keep into perspective when you have other boats crawling up your behind, but I'll go and find fish in another area and leave the losers to fight over that spot.
Or...I'll turn my boat sideways and throw my anchors out!:cool:
We fished today from 10:30-5:00 and thw wind was really hard to deal with but we still managed to have 44 keepers. I started down around bugtussell this morning and didn't get a bite for 2 hours, so I decided to go back to the Blocker area and fish some rip rap. We found fish 6-8 ft fin 8-25 FOW. They were pretty much spread out all day long. The biggest fish we had was 15 1/2 inches which weighed 1.85lbs. We spider-rigged all day. I also fished Blocker Thursday and caught one that was 15 inches as well we had 26 on that day!
Is anyone catching any from the banks as my boat is down right now and dont know when it will be back up and running. I will be down there next weekend for a family deal and may have to break off and go fishing if its been good. Thanks
Mason; You might try Bixby creek as the main lake fish are last to spawn.
Finally got to go with EB yesterday. It was my first experience with spider -rigging. Just let me say, I can see where it could be a disaster if you didn't know what you were doing. EB has it down to a science and I always enjoy learning a new technique. We fished several main lake points in 6-14 fow and the fish were 6-8 feet deep. The fish were scattered and hard to catch at times. We still probably caught 100 fish and kept 40 good ones. All fish were caught on big 3" jigs in a variety of colors, but pink seemed to be the common factor. We fished from 930-3p. If you want to learn how to spider-rig or just catch fish in general I would recommend booking a trip with EB. Thanks Brian!
Odie
Thanks for the report DHO, I plan on hitting it early in the morning. Not sure where I'll go, but I want to be done by HOT Thirty!
Got up this morning and finally made a decision on where to go fishing. Decided to try Crowder again since I did well there last week. I was on the water by 7 and made my first stop at Blocker Bridge. The water was just as muddy, if not more so, today as it was last Fri. But there was little to no current to speak of and the fish were scattered.
I started catching dinks right off the bat. After several passes I let out more line and started working the drop offs. That's when I started catching the larger Crappie.
I put two 14 inch plus Crappie in the boat there and after a few hours it seemed to slow down so I started hitting some main lake points. I was targeting 10 to 15 fow fishing 8 to 12 feet down. The magic color of the day was Blk/Pnk and Cajun Cricket.
After I hit a few points, I decided to make a run to Coal Creek. Hit some places there and landed 2 more 14 inch fish plus some smaller ones.
Water temps around Blocker was 78 to 84 and I had several readings up Coal Creek of 84 to 88.
Overall, I probably caught 50 or 60 fish today, most being in the 6 to 9 inch range. Seemed like the dinks were above 8 ft and the better ones were in the 8 to 12 ft range.
I ended the day at 2 p.m. with 17 keepers and 1 black bass that weighed just a little over 2 lbs. The average size of the fish were much better than normal. I culled hard because I have plenty of fish in the freezer and only kept 3 that were between 10 and 11 inches (due to deep hooking). The rest were good solid fish! :D They were also very aggressive with some awesome thumps! Several times I thought I had a big Sandie or Black Bass on and it turned out to be a pig Crappie! Now them are surprises I like.
I also hooked several gar, but thankfully all three spit the jig out before I had to go postal on 'em. One was about 4 foot long:eek:
Here's a couple of my 14 inch friends getting ready for a nap in the freezer.
http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/a...s14inchers.jpg
Just got back from Eufaula. Only caught a few crappie because it was too darn HOT! We decided to put some jug lines in and caught about 30 catfish. 20 of those were keepers...blues and channel cats. Smallest one was 5 inches long and largest were blue cats about 26-28 inches long. (Three of those!)
Caught some guys helping themselves to our jug lines on Saturday night. They had turned off their boat lights. We were sitting on the dock and heard the boat, but couldn't see it. It was about 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. After they had hit the 7 jugs closest to us, they turned on their lights and we saw them head off toward our other jugs around the point. Took us a few minutes to figure out what they had done. My brother and nephew jumped in the boat to see where they went. They had already cleaned one of the jug lines and were stopped at the second when our boat came around the point and headed toward them. They took off quickly and left the area. :mad:
It really doesn't cost much to make a jug line or bait it. I just don't understand why some people would steal other people's fish. On Friday night, someone took five of our jugs a long way away from where we put them. No way could they float against the current. We found them on Saturday morning after looking for 2 hours.
If we hadn't stayed up that late, we would have never known some low-lifes were running our jug lines. Boy, that was a long night. Finally went to sleep at 4:00 a.m. and back up by 7:00 to run lines.
You know, at least the low-lifes could have rebaited our hooks after they took the fish! :D:D
Anybody catch any crappie this past weekend?
Peke
Peke, your braver than I am! I stayed home this weekend, like I do most holiday's. I let the crazies have the lake for a few days. Glad to hear you caught some fish!
Those were some scumbags alright! Some people are just lazy and want to just run other peoples gear, take the fish and move on. One of the best things you can do is get their registration number on the side of their boat and report them. I know, hard to do at night, but a 1 Mil or better candlepower spotlight will help you keep up with 'em!
I've gone to strictly using floating jug lines. I don't anchor mine up any longer. I just pick 'em up and go when I'm done. You can get some night sticks and tape them or insert them into foam jugs for night time. Nighttime juggin' can be loads of fun, especially when you see a foam jug with a night stick on it scooting away from you!
Made it home last night about 11...talk about awesome holiday lake weather....can't remember a nicer one....caught around 300 crappie Friday night and saturday...around half would have been keeps for most...around 60 were 11 inches and bigger....Couldn't get them to bite much on Sunday....Caught around another 50 or so on Monday...all from my dock on pink/white/black, red/chart, and cajun cricket...the cajun cricket did the best....I made a run to blocker bridge on saturday but only caught 5...figured I would head back to the dock where they were biting...drove the boat over to the concert sunday night and wow....let me just say that those spotlights aren't just used to find jug lines!!!!!!!....all in all ....pretty darn good trip!
We fished last night from 10:00-2:00am and had 27 keepers. We were fishing with minnows 10-12 ft deep in 45 fow. The fish were 10-14 inches. We had two green lights down around 10 ft and some flood lights around the boat for seeing poles. It was really nice last night around 74 degrees. We got tired of catching them so we left. We also caught a ton of smaller crappie and sand bass. 25 were black crappie and 2 white crappie. 14 inch white was the biggest.
Okie Don, what do you mean floating jug lines? I use the pool noodles with 4-5 hooks on the line and a small weight at the bottom. They float with the current so we really have to keep an eye on where they are going. Is it the same thing?
Also, what are night sticks and where do I find them? Glow in the dark? We tried reflective tape, but you still need a spotlight to find them at night. Shoot, I have to make it easy for the low-lifes to run my jugs for me! LOL Thanks,
Peke
Yeah, it's real close to the way I jugline. I only use 2 hooks per line. I don't like a lot of hooks around me when I'm trying to get a big Cat in the boat. I generally use a 2 to 4 ounce weight on the bottom of the line.Quote:
Originally Posted by peke
Glowsticks or nightlights like these are what I'm talking about.Quote:
Also, what are night sticks and where do I find them? Glow in the dark? We tried reflective tape, but you still need a spotlight to find them at night. Shoot, I have to make it easy for the low-lifes to run my jugs for me! LOL Thanks,
Peke
Glowsticks
But I prefer these 8 inch glowsticks and I can get them in a box of 100.
You can insert smaller glowsticks into the foam or tape them on. I generally tape them most of the time, but Wild Wolf's jugs have a place to insert the sticks.
OkieDon, Thanks! I think I will order some of those glow sticks for the next time I go fishing.
I can see that having 5 hooks would not be good if we caught a really big catfish. Most of the ones we catch are 15 - 20 lbs. Don't know what we'd do with a bigger catfish!
I am also buying some of the 1.5" glow sticks for rod tips.
Peke
Sissy & I fished Friday around 10:30 am @ 9-A bridge on the west side from the bank. We noticed alot of what looked to be big shad in the current on the points, turned out to be small black bass feeding on fry sized minnows. We were using Beavertails and not getting any crappie. Sissy hooked a big cat {broke her line} Then a big bass {broke her line}. I swithched to 2- 1/16oz. jigs in elec. chk. & cajun cricket cast way out and counted them down to 10'-12' and pow a black crappie. Finally after missing more than I hooked I rigged a slipfloat set @ 11' with 2 cajun crickets and got a double on the first cast. We fished another hour and I ended up with 8 keepers and probly missed 15 more fighting wind and current. The water is very clear for this arm of the lake.