Minneapolis Pan fish

We have a very large, shallow bay, mud bottom here in the City where sunfish and crappies sun and probably take insect hatches every spring.

Last evening it was hot, starting with sunfish about 5 pm and crappies later from about 7 until dark. Hot tail was a Mr Twister Micro Shad in pearl on a 1/48th jighead with a size 8 hook. We had no live bait along, and generally don't use it for panfish anyway. We were using line diameters of .006 and .008 which gave us decent casting distance. Bite was soft and barely noticeable, often no more than line acting funny, even on the bluegills. Line watching was absolutely necessary. We did not have strong enough bite to feel on probably 2/3 of the fish we caught last evening.

Bluegills were taken on a bottom retrieve with or without a bobber to hold the bait right at or on the bottom. Crappies were taken at the surface. It was most interesting to see them layer out differently, with the bluegills shutting off when the crappie bite was on and vice versa. It was also interesting to note that the sunfish bite started off with some little greenies, then switched over completely to bluegills, and at the very end a couple of pumpkin seeds showed up. All the sunnies were brightly colored, very pretty fish and all were quite thick across the back, even the little ones.

Nothing of any size really, but there was constant action for some three hours or so. We lost count again, but figure we put back easily some three limits (20) of sunfish each and a couple each of smallish crappies (10), too. Nice active evening. Every thing was released, which is what we always do here in the City. There are way more than enough other who harvest way more than enough of the fish population.

In case anybody wonders last evening balances out a couple of skunk outings in the past week... :) Truly it aint always that hot.

BTW the fishing docks are installed now on the Minneapolis Park Board lakes as are the sailboat docks. Lakes up here are way down, maybe 3 or 4 ' below normal, and more than that from last year at this time.

We sure spanked the crappies yesterday. Water temps were varied. I measure at 6 feet deep since I don't catch fish off the transom where everybody's water temp comes from if the go the way of the locator. At 6 feet we found anywhere from 54 degrees to 58 degrees. Universally the 58 degree water was deep and provided the best fishing when we focused on the break into shoreline shallows. The fish haven't moved to the thin water yet but I'd imagine by this time next week we'll see so of that.

Got nice fish yesterday too. We saw some smaller [9 1/2" to 10 1/2"] hens, the big fish were all males and they're just now taking on some color.

Larger baits were working good too. Fun day, but hard on the tackle supply going into sunken wood. I guess that's part of the game. Good luck up there Dutch.

We are taking crappies and bluegills from the thin water up here. Lately that has been a witching hour bite, along towards dusk. We aren't seeing much in the way of larger crappies, but they generally don't show up on these lakes until well after dark anyway, but the bluegills have a number pushing 8 inches, although many are smaller. We aren't seeing any male crappies coloring up here yet either.

What is very interesting is the number of fish that we are taking that seem to be waiting at the surface for the little jigs to drop right into their mouths. So many bites happen right as the lure hits the water. The bottoms here are also silty and generally mud; so it is very likely these fish are grazing on early insect hatches. They are all in good flesh with no paper thin fish coming in, not even the little ones. We have gotten to the point of taking the slack out of casts before the jig lands on the water's surface. If not bit right away; we also watch the first settle very closely. A lot of our sunfish bite, even the larger fish is little more than strange line behavior. Strong bite signal has been quite rare.

BTW there are very few snags or hangups in the waters we are fishing; so most of our tackle loss is on beatup plastic tails. :) Also we have to look for contact points and migration routes whose difference from their surroundings is very often little more than a matter of inches.

The water is shallow enough that we can often follow light or pearl colored tails and see them disappear when the bite happens. That is a blast.

We had an unreal morning on the water. I don't even want to try and guess how many crappies we caught in 5 hours....over 200 easily.