Spawning Time

I was out yesterday and found the water temp was 72 degrees. The crappies were on their last leg of spawning.
I did catch some nice 11 to 12 inch fish that were released. A tube jig tipped with power bait worked quite well.

I was out 7-6-13 looking for some gills. The crappies had taken over the weed flats and only one nice nine inch gill was boated. One the other hand I boated over two dozen smaller crappies in the 8 to 10 inch range. I encountered a lot of up-bites.

Down here in the Cities, our water levels are way up, river too - so high the Corps of Engineers has closed the upper pair of locks at St Anthony Falls to small craft again. We are finding crappies in post spawn feeding areas and patterns in both the river and in the lakes. Past spawning areas for bluegills are now definitely deep enough for the first time in a couple of years; so the bluegills have moved back up and if past is any indication some of those beds will stay active until the next real cool down, perhaps for 3 to 5 more weeks. Crappies and bass (also pike) will move back and forth into the weedline and the outside breaks along those places and gorge on the sunny fry that come off those beds and on the smaller fish they attract to feed on them as long as the spawn continues. I have seen that go as late as toward the end of August as long as the temps stay up like they are now or close to that. It pays to work the outside edges of such bluegill beds as break to deeper water, weed edge and in or out along the breaklines. Time of day can be real important this time of year, too, and may vary from one body of water to another. Best crappies for size shallow will normally come in low light, but numbers of more average fish can come at any time during the day, especially on cloudy days. Last week we found some numbers of average crappies alternating with carp in some holes along current breaks. We encountered quite a bit of up bite, a whole lot of very soft one timers, often with quick spits, and a number of just there fish, taking too soft to see or feel - pretty much standard crappie performance, but one had to be right on them and working the plastics very very slow to get any action. The occasional carp taking the little plastics made for some points of real excitement as well.

Gotta run. Some 40' of fencing is going up along a flower bed this afternoon. At least half a dozen post holes are going to be needed. We hope to at least get the framework up and if necessary put in the slats tomorrow. Digging post holes by hand does not rate anywhere near as much fun as fishing, but this fence line has been needed for a while.