What a difference four days can make!!!!!

Water temps at my local fishing hole were 51 on Monday, fish were nowhere near the shallows. Friday, my wife an daughter made plans that had me and my son-in-law (and my grandsons) all grinning from ear to ear ... they decided that my daughter's family would go in their boat, and my wife and I would go in our boat, and we'd go fishing!!!!

When the ladies make plans like that, I'm all over it!!!!!

The water temp on Friday was 65 DEGREES!!!! It was pretty windy, so we had to fish near shore on the upwind side of the lake - this meant we couldn't fish the biggest spawning bed. fortunately, I've patterned this little lake pretty thoroughly, and have spring spots to fish regardless of wind direction. I took advantage of the new law that lets us use three rods, and kept pretty busy for most of the 2 hours we were on the water. I caught a fair mix of dinks and keepers - and managed to get my wife and son-in-law pretty frustrated when I was catching all the fish and they only got a couple each. Grand total keeper crappie, I got 17, my wife got one (as well as a nice bass!) and my grandson contributed the final keeper to the bucket, for a grand total of 19 keepers in 2 hours.

When they asked what I was doing different (nothing that I could see), I told them it was because I was wearing my Crappie.com t-shirt :)

Oh yeah, the difference that 4 days makes - well that would be the 51 degrees and not spawning, to 65 degrees and spawning. My dogwood is still in full bloom, so I guess the screwey weather still didn't break the crappie spawn-dogwood bloom connection after all!