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Scouting trip for crappie 10/03/2017
My friend Ricky Watts is fishing a crappie tournament this coming weekend, so he and I hit the water on a scouting/fishing trip. We had fished the Hiwassie river the day before, so we decided to try the lower end of Chickamauga lake and Thursday we will probably try the mid-lake portion on the Chick. We need to find some bigger fish for Ricky. I'm 75 and this is the year that I retired from tournament fishing. I may fish one more tournament in November, but that is still up in the air. Grin.
We checked on a bluff at first light, but no takers. So, on to the next spot which is an offshore brushpile that I discovered a couple of years ago. It had a big school of 11" crappie on it this morning. We caught 4 and decided to leave them alone. Ricky may want to come to this spot and pick up a quick limit before looking for the bigger fish. Need 7 really quick to take the pressure off. Grin. Then we hit another good spot and we both got bit, but did not hook up on this spot. It was an under water ridge line and we fished the point where it drops off into deeper water. Then I hit one dock and caught a very nice thick 12" plus Black Crappie. We hit two more docks without any fish under them.
We moved around, went back into one creek looking for more shallow fish but didn't find any. No fish on the bridge pilings either. By this time, it was nearing 11:00 when us old timers usually load the boat and go home to honey do chores. Grin. But we did hit one last spot and Ricky caught a nice 13.5" Black Crappie. We quit on that note.
We used mostly Bobby Garland lures, but I did catch one on a Bass Assassin Pro Tiny 2" Bluegrass lure. We changed colors a lot today, trying to find the magic color, but not today. The wind was fickle. It was predicted to be ESE switching to SE, but it ended up being out of the North mostly and gaining strength the later in the day. Blue skies, water temp at 73.6 when we started and 75.6 when we finished. I'm sort of glad that I'm not fishing this tournament. LOL
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