Priest 4/26 Report with Pics

Well a day off work and the weather finally had an agreement and allowed me to go fishing Sat morning and boy am I glad i got to go. Fished a little lower on the lake then the reports I have been hearing about but i over slept a bit and didn’t get on the water till about 7:30. Thought i would head up to Bryants Grove and check it out first thing. I pulled up and there was already 4 boats around where i normally fish but theres plenty of brush in the area and they all seemed to be fishing 22-30 FOW. I decided to start a little shallower water and started around 16 FOW. I basically let the little wind there was drift me around that depth. Before i could get all my poles in the water i caught one and in the first 30 min i had 4 in the boat. Within the next hour i had 10 total and then it started to slack off. i decided to move around and talk with the other guys I was fishing next to bc they weren’t having the same luck i was. They were fishing the Big brush piles i originally went up there for. One guy was catching smaller fish at a decent rate with a keeper every now and then and the other guys weren’t doing any good at all. One was trolling rattle traps and jigs with not much luck either. every single fish i caught came in 15-20 FOW 2-3 ft from the bottom and the majority of the fish i caught were in open water away from the brush which i thought was strange. After the action slowed and 13 in the boat i moved down to the suggs creek area and upon pulling up i found my “marking brush pile” i tossed out a bouy to line myself up with the other brush and started catching fish again. i caught 6 more with 45 min of being there with another 6 boats looking at me like what the hell is he using? I quickly realized that it was a very slow day for the majority out there. I lost a few nice fish at the boat bc I’m too hardheaded to use a net but i had to cut the day short bc my trolling motor ran out of juice. Looks like i have a purchase in the near future with some new batteries.... It was a good day but i really wanted to catch my limit and think i could have if my trolling motor would have lasted. I trailered the boat around 12 with 20 keepers. Never caught a single dink all day (excluding the 4 stripe i caught). Also had a Gar that wanted to say hi and get into all my lines and tangle them up but he put up quite the fight. Pics Below. Any Questions feel free to ask!
Attachment 160367Attachment 160368Attachment 160369Attachment 160370

Those are nice fish, good trip.

Congrats, good report. :highfive

Nice! that one may be a bit toothy though :biggrin

Way to go Tom. Glad your back on the water.
Did the fish have any eggs in them? How about water temp up there? Your report was very interesting.

Nice fish, and good to see Priest giving up those pretty crappie.

Sorry i thought it was Slabacks posting.

Looks like you had a good morning. We fished from 6:00 till 3:00 and only got 28. Couldn't find em where we had been plus all the boats were a problem. We also went down lake around 10:00 and got the last 20. I am afraid we are done for the year, the pleasure boaters came out in force this weekend.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dave and Lynn

Way to go Tom. Glad your back on the water.
Did the fish have any eggs in them? How about water temp up there? Your report was very interesting.

---

not a problem, to answer your questions though I don’t have a temp gauge on my boat personally but the guys at the ramp said it was around 64 degrees. Most all had eggs and some of the smaller fish had already spawned out. The larger fish looked like they were ready to go any day this week. It was interesting looking at the different textures of the egg sacks. A lot of guys said tuesday and thursday were really good days for them before the front moved in friday. Didn’t seem to bother me that much Saturday though. I never have really fished right off the bottom before but seeing a couple others on the site having luck that way i decided to give it a shot and it paid off. A lot of other guys were not fishing as close to the bottom and weren’t doing as good. Im not too familiar with upper end towards the forks in the real shallow water so i stuck with the deeper areas i knew. The word was deff. out though. At one point there was 10 boats in Bryants grove area all 200 yards spaced out and Suggs creek there was 6 when I showed up i believe. Everybody and their brother was crappie fishing Sat morning.

Old Hickory was crowded also. Parking lot was full at the ramp I used near Bledsoe SP. You did much better than I did on Saturday. I caught 6 but only 2 were keepers. Thanks for the report I can wait for the rain to back off...