Question?????????

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I posted this on the main board and got no response, maybe I can get some input from some of you reelfoot lake guys.


Hello,
My buddy and I just got back from Reelfoot. We fished Monday, Tues and Wensday for about 5 hours each day. The last couple of days were started catching fish right off the bottom. We were in about 12 ft of water and fishing about 11 ft deep. We were doing pretty good yesterday (wensday) fishing at this depth. But we quit catching much later in the day. We noticed about this time that the fish were suspended on the DF and moved our rigs up to about 6ft. We caught a couple of more fish but it was getting time to go home. We were tired and cold. The boat control was starting to get sloppy so I can't really say we gave the 6ft depths and honest try.

My question is: I have always "heard" that suspended fish were harder to catch than fish holding near the bottom. Could I get some comments?

By the way, we brought home 40 crappie for our 3 day efforts. Most of them caught on bright colored jigs (char and orange) jig heads tipped with small tuffy minnows fishing in 10 to 13 feet of water on the Lower Blue dragging a chain.

The last couple years at Reelfoot it seemed the last hour of the day the fish were harder to catch. And yes they will come up and suspend like that later in the day or any time for that matter. The trouble at Reelfoot is the crappie are not schooled tightly and when feeding time is over and they are tight to the stump they are hard to catch. I speed up when they are like that and that should draw off a more aggressive fish. I dont think suspended fish are harder to catch, it may be that finding the right depth makes a big difference when they are suspended. A couple inches to deep might keep them from biting but when are tight to the bottom and your just above them all they gotta do is open up and eat.