I still Crappie Fish

It has been awhile since I have been out chasing the pan fish. Too long I would guess. I've spent most of the spring fishing for walleye and trying to master my craft.

Memorial weekend is NOT the time to be on the water if you are from Michigan. That is unless you don't mind dodging personal watercraft, people pulling tubes and skiers, and anyone else that thinks a license to operate a boat comes with the owners manual. I spend Saturday doing custom farming work for a longtime customer of mine. Sunday I spent doing work at my place. Brian and I did manage to hit a local pond that I have not fished in quite awhile. Did some bank fishing and managed to catch around a dozen large mouth bass. Brian caught one crappie.

I figured that Monday afternoon would be a decent time to hit one of my local favorites. Give the travelers time to vacate their campsites and get their boats out of the water. We hit the lake around 5:15 and headed to a known spawning ground we have previously discovered. We took note that the water temperature (surface) was 78 degrees. We made one pass tossing some soft plastics and only managed one large mouth. I assumed that the spawn was finished. In hind sight, I wish I would have thrown a minnow or three up that way. During the spawn, this area just doesn't seem to produce near as much on soft plastics as it does on live bait.

We moved out to around 8ft of water and found a cluster of weeds about 20x20 foot. We drifted next to it and each of us picked up a crappie. I used spot lock to keep us up wind of the weeds and we casted back into the pockets and on the sides of the weeds. We managed to catch 22 crappies and kept 19. I think Brian included a few of his throw backs into the livewell!! Most fish were caught on minnows below a bobber using a standard size 4 gold Aberdeen hook and sinker.
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Took Bugofficer with me yesterday to the Bay for a little walleye fishing. Got a two person 16 fish limit in just a hair over 2 hours and had lots of fun doing it. The waves were more than predicted but it wasn't a big deal. Same area I told a couple of friends about last week. They told me that the area didn't have anything to offer. I guess they don't know what they are doing!

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Outstanding. Great catches. Some day, I might have to figure out how to catch walleye. I have only landed a dozen or so in my entire life, and half of those were accidental catches while crappie fishing.

Frank, I think I can make that happen in my boat. Once you learn the tricks, they can pretty much be transferred over to any lake (Houghton included).

What I was going to put in my post (which I started to write) was that I wished I had worked harder on the spawning ground. My assumption was that the fish were done. That weed bed we fished is usually a pretty good transition area from the spawning grounds out to deeper water. Both Brian and I figured the fish were there waiting to head back to the main lake and were ambushing pray as it went by. It was evident when they would swing and miss at the offering. You could watch them come back two and three times for it. We lost a ton of fish because they were so aggressive that we didn't get a very good hook set.

While filleting these fish, we noticed that they were NOT done spawning. What we thought were post spawn fish putting on the feed bags before spawning turned out to be Pre spawn fish waiting to hit the beds. Now I wish I would have fished the spawning ground harder. This would have told me if these fish were just late bloomers and the others were on their beds or, if nothing was on their beds and the fish really had not spawned yet. Spawning can happen in pretty short order when the weather is right. Due to the massive temperature rise we have had in the last week to ten days, my assumption was the fish were not ready, the water warmed up too quickly and the fish backed off their beds.

I suspect that these fish will now ready themselves in deeper cooler water and spawn in deeper water. Instead of that 1 to 3 foot mark, I would bet that in this particular situation, the fish might spawn in 5 to 6 feet of water or deeper. They may also seek cover in the form of weed edges to provide shade that is usually provided in the shallow waters.

Just a theory but that is part of the fun of fishing. If we knew what they were going to do all the time it would be no fun. One more piece of knowledge to add to my bag of tricks for future reference.

FYI, that fish was 13 3/4 inches. 1/4 inch shy of my first master angler crappie of the year.

Nice mess of fish and a great report.