Schools's out, fishing's in...... G'ville w/daughter
Daughter was out of school today, so that means my BFF (Best Fishing Friend) goes to G'ville with me. She promptly started taking me to school and was up 10 fish to 2 within first hour and a half (mixture of crappie, bluegill and bass). Hit a dry spell for a while, then around 10:30 we started to connect with about 10 straight 13"+ crappie. Everything in the early morning hit pink/yellow, but then all went to only hitting mostly white combinations the rest of the day.
I long line with 3 rods out each side of the boat, and not sure why, but the middle rod on both sides always does the best. Today, I caught 4 straight crappie on my middle pole; catch one, cast it back out and would have another fish on before it could even straighten the line out.
Caught a 15'ish lb blue cat on a 1/16 jig and 4-lb line with ultralight 6' rod. Probably about 20 minutes of fight but managed to finesse it in......and daughter promptly played with it in the livewell for the next 2 hours.....god love her!
One of my favorite areas is fishing in the Allred's/islands area, where I get a lot of black crappie. However, can't hardly fish it this year....chopped up floating grass is everywhere and it fouls the lines so bad I just can't get any clean runs in without cleaning off salad for 75% of the time. Bummer, because I always do good in that area. My 16" black from last week came from that area and today I couldn't even fish it. Oh well, forced me to try some new areas and caught fish at each of them.....not a lot of numbers though....only a couple at each spot.
Ended the day with 15 big keepers, one dink, eleventy million mid-size bluegill, one big blue cat, and maybe 20 hybrid stripe and largemouth bass (all small). Gave the crappie and cat to a couple of gentlemen fishing under a bridge. They were as happy to get them as I was to NOT have to clean them. Win-win!
No school and fishing with the daughter......also a win-win! I'll take it!
