Busted morning turns into a productive afternoon.

Morning trip was terrible, should've known better since my allergies were playing up a bit with a chilly north breeze that made fishing into the wind a bit difficult. Not to mention most of the good spots were taken up both at the handicap pier and the island bridge. Something told me the fish would be in the shade and from talking to folks later in the afternoon who came back, they had some luck that morning in shade.

After 2 hours in the morning using worms and minnows, mixed in with some plastic jigs and coming up empty handed, i went back home to take a nap (long nap it turned out). After i got back from the morning trip i put the minnows in a plastic bag and threw that into a freezer (first time freezing minnows). So when i went out in the afternoon, which was a last minute decision to go. This time i didn't forget to take the cooler like i did this morning. Hit the island bridge around 4pm as the handicap pier was still pretty busy. No one was on the bridge so i had it to myself.

Used a 1/32nd jig with a yellow head and white tail tipped with a small piece of worm. The strategy was to slowing let it fall to the bottom and slowly bring it back up. I got some really light hits from bluegills, some were small, but i nabbed two good size ones that went into the cooler. Then i hooked a crappie, not a good size so he went back, but i surprised that he bit on the worm and not the minnow. I ended up nabbing two more that were good sizes, so that made 4 in the cooler. I was only 30 min out there and already nabbed 4, that was better than this morning, i thought. A kid stopped by on his bike to do some fishing, said he was out there earlier in the morning (right after i left) and he caught 3 10" crappie under the bridge, lucky kid i thought. He was using a slip bobber with a minnow 2 feet from the bobber, he kept getting hits, but he had so much slack that by the time he pulled out the slack and was good to set the hook, it was too late, so i told him to take out the slack because crappie were biting lightly, at times it was a little difficult for me to feel or even see the bite. He was really pulling them in after that. He ended up with 18 crappie and gave me 3 because they wouldn't fit in his cooler.

After i saw him pulling in crappie on minnows, and i was getting nothing but bluegills now on the worms, i decided to use the frozen minnows. I thought i would get hits on cutting up the minnow, but that didn't work. So i decided to cut the head off and just put the whole body on the jig. That worked a lot better. Soon i was pulling the crappie out every cast.

I finally pulled in and left around 630pm. Ended up with 12 crappie and 3 bluegills. Didn't get much meat off them, but i needed the practice with fileting small panfish. I butchered the bluegill, but once i got to the crappie, i really started to get the hang of it, even though it took me 3 hours :) The hardest part was cutting the filet from the skin so i didn't have to scrap the scales off. I'll cook them tomorrow for lunch, should make for a decent lunch, i just think there is going to more crust than actual fish, so i might grill it rather than fry it, or i might bake it.

At any rate, it was much better in the afternoon after the temp warmed up, though they still stayed in the shade. Water level was down about a foot or two at Walnut Creek.

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