Dardanelle Report

Tough crappie fishing for Team Purple Turban on lake Dardanelle. We spent most of the time learning our electronics which is a code phrase for "we couldn't catch any crappie".

Carol dropped me at Dublin bay landing and while she made her way back to our lodging facility, I took a quick look around with the lectronics. I found everything in the bay shallower than 7 feet to be sonar resistant due to the amount of vegetation. I also knew that blind dragging for crappie through all that salad would lead to fighting words between husband and wife, so I looked else where. I finally found a bunch of white dots on the sonar which I assumed were crappie and hurried back to the dock to pick up Carol so we could pick up a quick limit of crappie in the hour we had left before dark. We loaded up and headed back out into the lake and dropped 16 minners down to the depth of the white dots and were immediately disappointed by the lack of bites. We fished till dark missing a few fish and only catching one yellow bass. The next morning, we looked at a few spots and took a run out toward the river channel. I was greeted by the view of hundreds of ducks coming out of the north and landing on a big flat off the river, but no fish were found. We then decided to check the narrows to see if any fish were there. We finally picked up one nice 7 incher about 20 feet deep. It was only an inch from being a slab, but he was really thick. We then fished down into shoal bay and discovered the mother load of sonar returns and they produced 2 cats and a gob of bass. We fished on down the bay and caught more bass and no crappie. Our last day, we only had a short time to fish, so we decided to go back to the catfish and bass hole where we were pretty sure to get the pole bent. We motored straight to the location which was at the north end of shoal bay just before it goes into the narrows on the west side of the channel where the water starts to shallow up. We caught and released a whole bunch of bass mostly small with the largest being around 2lbs. 3 times we doubled with a bass on each of the double hook rigs and the best multiple hook up was 7 bass simultaneously. After an hour and a half of unhooking and untangling we packed it in. The best bite was on a blk/char slider or just a hook and minnow. We practiced catch and release on all the bass and also managed to catch and release our cell phone which now resides on the bottom of shoal bay with all our numbers and pictures.

We had a great time. We saw lots of fowl and deer and had one doe watch us for a good while from the park side of shoal bay while we were have the bass fiasco. We had all of shoal bay to ourselves which tells you lots about the bite on that end of the lake. Carol soloed on backing the trailer and did an awesome job for a rookie. Maybe not a perfect job of backing, but plenty good enough to get the job done. We hope the fish don't run up the minutes on the phone and I hope they enjoy the pictures.

Good luck to everyone fishing.

Shoulda cut out and fished with me on Lake N , would have to have launched off a dirt road but you would have caught some Crappie.

Man what a crop of bass Lake D has coming up. I ran into a school of those rascals and it was two at a time. Too many times. LOL

Caught at least 15 of them myself single poling around those bridges!

We got on the bass Saturday in the CACA championship and did not practice catch and release. There was a bass boat that would not move from the bend in Illinois Bayou I wanted to fish and he was not to impressed with me throwing those green carp in the dead well. I think what bothered him the most was he didn't catch a fish in that bend. :biggrin I sure am glad to hear the ducks were coming in up there.

Great report! Tried to call but all I got was gurgles Lol