Quabbin; 9/28/17

It has been almost 2 months since Walt or I were able to hit the crappie together, due to medical situations. Seems to have settled down somewhat, so we decided to give it a whirl. We launched a bit after 8 am and started fishing at 8:15, with the air at 65 degrees and the water at a balmy 72 degrees. Breezy - with expected winds to kick up to 25 mph by noon. (No problem for us!)

Here's what it looked like as we pulled away from the launch and headed out:

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With the wind kicking, we elected to drift with 1/8 & 1/16 oz. ball heads dressed with a variety of plastics; including straight tails, paddle tails and marabou horseheads. The straight tails started out really kicking with 18 crappie in the first hour! The crappie were spread out in small groups:

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And they suspended from 8' - 15' down. So we had our work cut out for us. By noon the "breeze" had morphed into 25 mph wind with white caps and tough going:

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We gave up on the 1/16 oz. heads, sticking with the 1/8 oz. instead. This is about when I pulled out the Crappie Cranks that I won here in one our contests. Right off I got two nice black crappie. Problem was, with winds and cross winds, trying to keep the cranks from tangling with our other lines became a problem; so I didn't stick with them for too long. Enough blather.....here's some shots of the fish we landed and released, starting with one of mine:

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And here's a close-up of that last picture in which, if you look closely, you can see a custom tied horsehead jig which "Skiptomylou" tied for me recently. He called it his "acid rain" color:

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Boy, did the crappie like this one! Thanks Skip!

All in all a great day to be out on the water. And here's a shot of our "tally sheet" for the day:

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Like I said, 49 for 5 hours isn't bad.....but hardly great. We still enjoyed the outdoors today, along with fine companionship. Thanks Walt! :)

Congrats on a great day on the water! Glad to see that new color wiring!

Thank you,

Skip

All right!! Glad to see you guys back out on the water!
Thanks for the report, looks like a good way to get back in to the swing of things.