Good day at Walnut Creek

For the past 2 weeks it has been nothing but fishing at Offutt Base Lake, and who can blame me after catching 3 bass over 15" and 4 crappie between 10 - 12". But i felt that today, i needed to go somewhere else and try my luck. While my catch was much better quantity wise at Walnut Creek, the quality took a hit.

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...1-2012_001.jpg

This guy was probably about the mid range size wise on my catch today. Its a video capture from the camcorder on the hat, which i won't post the video as most of it was before and after the bite was really active. Weather wise it seemed like a good day, despite the chill. It was barely touching 50 degrees when i started, but the sun and no clouds, it felt warmer than it did, until the wind kind of picked up and blow that cool NE breeze in my face and reminded me what the temp really was. I didn't want to go to the handicap dock, i wanted a place that the NE breeze would be blowing towards, so i headed out to this little island and stand on the northeast side and cast into the wind. There was a few guys in a boat using minnows to catch crappie near the submerged trees, some 50 - 70 yards away from me. I started out with a inline spinner and a slow retrieve to test the waters and i got a few hits, but they kept coming off. So i switched to a white roadrunner with a gold blade and put a plastic white/chart creeper on it and that didn't work. So i put a 1/64oz jighead with a crappie and bobber to keep the jig from falling into the weeds or getting stuck on the rocks. Caught a few green sunfish, but small ones. Tried my third option which was to put a heavier jig on 1/8oz black/chart. That's when i landed the crappie pictured above. Unfortunately that was it. At this point the boat moved on and i contemplated moving, when some guys came down the hill and started casting minnows on bobbers about 20 - 30 feet to the right of me. They kept landing bass like no tomorrow, nothing really big, i think was about 13" but everything else was about half that. More than likely they kept catching the same few over and over again. I find it hard to believe there was 20 - 30 bass in that little space where they were casting. But it seemed about 5 seconds after the bobber hit the water i would hear their rod jerk back and they would start reeling in. Finally i made a switch to a small 1/18oz jig, all white with the bobber and my second rod had a roadrunner jighead with a silver plastic, kinda like a minnow. That's when i pulled in my crappie load, about 15 good size crappie, biggest was probably close to 9".

Then disaster struck, as i casted out my 1/18oz white jig, i saw the bobber go right and jig go left. I realized, the line must have been frayed and snapped during the cast. Well, atleast i got my bobber, right? Started reeling in and my bobber didn't move. Great! Lost the jig and the bobber. So i went back to the roadrunner, which didn't have as much luck, but it did produce another 3 crappie and 1 bluegill, before the wind switched on me to the SE and threw the jighead into a submerged tree. So i lost that. While i took the two rods back to the tackle box and re-rig everything and try and find a good substitute for the white jig i lost (closest i had was a white/pink jig). The two guys packed up their stuff and left, the wind was more out of the SE instead of the NE, and i didn't catch anything after that.

I thought about going to the other side of the island and cast back into the wind again, but that is more prominent with weeds and algae, i just didn't want to deal with it, fish or no fish. So it was a good day despite the chill, i just wish i could have caught more on the camcorder. Maybe the fish were camera shy, who knows.