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Got a question about longlining. Caught about 40 yesterday evening with 5 between 13-14" all the rest were 4-6" It's been that way for the last month, lots and lots of really small fish to catch a few nicer fish. Any ideas on how to avoid all the tater chips.
You could always go somewhere that there are no crappie. I don't see catching dinks as being a bad thing. They are the future of your fishery.
Try trolling bigger baits like 3 inch curly tails or crankbaits. Get out on the deeper channel structure and you will see less of the small fish. Once I started trolling Bandits in earnest, I rarely ever catch a crappie less than 10 inches, which is our size limit here.
If you see fish on the bottom, go deep, the big boys are down there a lot of times.
I up my bait profile for bigger fish.
99% of my trolling is crank baits only.Quote:
Originally Posted by mrdux
Key in on fish on isolated structure. It fish are at a certain depth, such as 10 foot go to 10 foot and try structure. Larger fish isolate themselves from larger schools of smaller fish. Bait size typically should match available forage and changing size May or may not affect catch size. It definitely will affect catch rate. Crank baits are a larger profile bait and give you great depth control. They are effective in the summertime when most forage is larger. I would stick to a bait that is working and experiment with area and depth first.
Stay away from shore, use bigger baits, and troll faster. Can't tell you how many crappies I've caught pulling walleye cranks 2-2.5mph. I'm not saying to go THAT fast, just speed it up a bit.
Fished the same water today that I fished 2 weeks ago, and that day a friend and I were hard pressed to get a keeper. Today I kept none under 12 when it was all done, and gave away 11 to a friend returning a favor. Can't tell you where the better fish were 2 weeks back. Maybe color changes, speed, or depth of water would change it up. All mine were on bandit 300's.
I'll try the bigger baits as well as putting a couple of crankbaits in the spread.
Took the advice given here and a much better average size yesterday. Went with 3" twister tails and a 1/8 head and caught 22 with only 7 dinks. Ran a Bandit 200 and a flicker shad with on luck, thinking they need to ran faster than 1.1mph. Number were down but the size was up, thanks again.