Quote Originally Posted by fishn_a_ledge View Post
lets assume you have 2 good crappie fisherman in the boat. At the end of the day, you have 32 fish in the livewell. If only one person would have been fishing, would you still have 32 fish. All this to say, do you think there is only "x" amount of fish on a piece of structure. Can one person effectively catch them, if they slow down. Does the second person just help them get "x" out faster? Or do you think more jigs or baits in the water cause reaction bites and more fish come to them from surrounding areas? Let me have some input.
Basing my answer on the conditions of one school of fish on one isolated piece of cover :

One person "can" catch them all, but usually doesn't. You may "fire up" that group of fish, or you may "spook" the school ... depending on the method you're using (single bait or multiple baits), depth/distance from them, the amount of commotion created (boat noise, landing noise, boat control noise/shadow), and mood/activity level of the fish at that time.

With only X amount of fish on a given piece of cover, you may or may not catch them faster with two people (for the same reasons as listed above) or you may spook them faster with the greater commotion level. Whether or not the feeding frenzy will draw in more fish from the surrounding cover ... ... as it may depend on how far away those fish are, and whether or not they're hungry/aggressive enough to expend the energy to move that distance. And it may also depend on whether or not there are baitfish in closer proximity to them, than the area you're fishing.

When the fish are concentrated in a single, small area, then having multiple baits "in their face" may not be the best idea .... but, if they're scattered over a larger area, multiple baits will present more targets to more fish, more often.

At any given time, even if there are 30 fish on a piece of cover, not all of them will be in a feeding mood. You "may" stimulate some of those in a neutral mood to go into a feeding mood, by catching some of the more aggressive fish ... but, you're unlikely to turn them all on. Those in a neutral or negative mood "may" be turned off even more, by the commotion and/or the removal of the more aggressive fish, and they may hunker down even deeper into the cover or simply leave the area.

That's just my opinion ... and I reserve the right to be completely wrong


... cp