Jig weight and soft plastic length maybe key in my catch; good locations didn't hurt

[Spoonminnow]

Went out yesterday not expecting the numbers of quality fish seeing as how poor the catch was the day before. The advance of a major cold front with wind over 14 mph didn't help but the bite was sporadic for perch and the crappies caught weren't even legal size.

As usual I was using my spoon minnow creation on 1/16 and 1/8 oz in my usual two colors: white or green pumpkin with green and black flakes. Off and on I was trying out a weedless jig I made using 27g wire to see whether it would deter the pan fish bite, but as you can see different species weren't deterred.







Yesterday I decided to leave the weedless jigs in the box and use 1/8 oz. jigs with smaller minnow grubs in open water and its seems to have made a difference. The shorter length of 2 1/2" vs 3" and the faster retrieve necessary to keep the jig off bottom in 4-6' got more hook ups. My location was in a different part of the lake though the structure was similar.

After connecting with better size perch, I discovered the extent of the huge flat that ended near an old channel and went from 4' down to 6' as I found out later, but not until I started hooking 13-14" crappie in a school.

Up until that day, crappie schools only yielded 9" crappie maybe due to the 80 degree water, but after the colder 49 degree nighttime temperature, the fish came out into shallower open water. note: For this lake, 14" crappie and 9" perch are decent sizes. The area I anchored in produced those fish, a 14" bass and two pickerel over 16" - all on the same lure. A dozen large crappie and over fifteen large yellow perch caught between 1:30 and 2:30 pm in bright sun in one spot, I consider an excellent outing.

It's also possible that using a 6 lb. test fluorocarbon leader rather than 8 lb test mono may have allowed a better action on longer casts and in deeper water. No other lures I tried worked near as well regardless of area. (In fact, I'm going to start donating many of my soft plastics to kids at events they fish in. I'll keep some 2 3/4" tubes, but no more single curly tail grubs or Bass Assassin prong tail grubs.
Mine are so much better!

Fall will bring out more monster pan fish from the heavier weed beds and deeper water as the water temp drop further. By then, lure size won't matter much especially in schools were fish strike a larger variety of lures.