Lemon Today.

Launched at 8am water was 51.3 and wind was light. Started long lining my RR 1/8 oz jigs 0.4 to 0.9 and no luck where i normally have picked up crappies last year in 6 to 10' of water in the bays and down the weed lined areas of banks, and the the depth finders weren't showing absolutely anything so headed out into the lake to chase the creek channel. At 10:30 the wind kicked up out of the east and I was fighiing 1-3 whitecaps, and no boat control so moved up the lake where it shallows, and finally caught a couple of small crappie as I located them on the Helix Mega 9". Pics that I am posting of schools of crappies and baitfish are all near the channel of the creek as well as in the creek channel as I would peck away at each school making a pass and catchinng one here and one there as they were finicky as all get out and very light on the bite. At 12:30pm I though I would try crank baits so switched rods and loaded the cranks and trolled them from 1.2 to 1.5 mph and they would hit the cranks just like the jigs. Light as all get out. Best colors on the jigs ended up being a curly tail on a 1/8 Road Runner in color of half yellow/half white body with a chartruese tail dipped in slab sauce as nothiing else would work for me. I tried tubes injected with nibbles on Road Runners,,and no go as its my favorite way to long line a jig,,Tried vertical jigging them but the wind was against my boat control so that was out. Finally at 2:45, wind changed out of the north and bite completely shut down..I put the boat on the trailer at 4:15 and called it day. there was a few boats fishing the banks and docks with no luck. Fish just aren't on the bank yet and neither is the bait fish. The water temp ended up at 56.5 tho so its just a matter of time before the bait fish and the crappies leave the channel area as I couldn't locate any schools more than 50 yds or so from the channel and crappie are all around the bait balls. You would think with the water temp we have on the surface we have, so its got to still be pretty cold where they are at. I ended up catching 20 or so fish, and only 6 were over 10 to 12" so everything ended up released. The following screen shots of the Helix Mega 9 will show the schools of fish I was concentrating on and some of the fish were around good cover and structure,,but relutant to cooperate except for the few caught. I figure next weekend will turn on and has to be better with the warm temps we will have this week, along with the 40ish degree nites...hope so,,cause this is getting alittle old waiting on the fish to turn on and feed and move towards the shores. Just my 2 cents on the issues.

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I could long line jigs and troll cranks, and if you didn't located the schools on the Mega 9, you just didn't catch anything. The Mega paid off today.

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Colors on the cranks was mad cow and purple/chartreuse. The wavy down images of the bottom shows me bobbing like a yo yo..in the wind.

Great screen shots. Today's electronics reveal so much more than just a couple of years ago. We run to Illinois just across the river on Saturday to what we call club holes. Water temps were 58 and stayed the same all day. Found a few from four to six fow in weeds and a few on deep wood with weeds nearby. Found a "fuzzy" wind blown down tree with emerging lily pads in shallow water that just looked right and it was. I put the nose in the wind and locked the xi down. We spent the next two hours wearing out crappie, big gills and small bass. Biggest was 11 but many 8 to 10 and bloated with eggs which were released as were the gills. 1/16 and1/24 oz jigs with a variety of colors swim tails but white and a light color mix was best.

They definitely missed the call on the wind. I fished in mud all day and caught a limit, but couldn't get the bigger fish to bite. Caught all males up on shallow wood, no color to them at all. Larger fish were staging and would not cooperate.

Sent from my Z983 using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

My fish were all males and no color. Pure white. Finally warm nite last nite. A week of this weather will change things for sure and start the movement to the bank. Water cleared up from being muddy but still stained heavy. Glad you limited out!

I am going to have to upgrade my depth finder is that the best on market or are their newer better ones

The Helix Mega units have a transducer that produces almost 1.3 MHz of power to produce a true pic on the head of the unit from the transducer as I understand it. Hummingbird advertises 3 times the power. I have to say this, in the muddiest, garbage filled water, it gives the best image I have ever seen. As I understand it,( not a guru on electronics lol) all other units, the head of the units, take the pulses from the transducers and computer generate the pics on your screens. Garmins a very good unit and lots of reads in the electronics section of the forum. Lowrance has very good units and they just did a software upgrade that really created a better pic on DI of my TI 7 that I also run, it really did a outstanding job on their carbon series units. For the money, a lot of guys are going to the garmins and I went for the Helix Mega 9 SI at 1300.00 as their 10 is 1700.00 but has I think even a better picture cause it has 400 more pixels in the screen, but the 9 is so super as it is, blows me away with the clarity. You can add panopix on the garmin, real time fish movement, and on Hummingbird you can add the 360 but both are a chunk of coin and always more money. Same for the top of the line hummingbirds and Lowrances, as it’s a matter of how much do you want to sink into electronics? The way I saw it, at 68, hope this is the last electronics I ever need, but heck, are we ever satisfied with our toys? :Rofl On,the front of my boat, I run the Mega 9 for DI and SI and a Lowrance hook 5 to show lake map and sonar. Back of the boat I moved the Lowrance TI 7 HD SI and DI. It’s a G 3 jon for walleye/ crappie fishing or trolling out of the back. I spend all my time tho crappie fishing on the front, so constantly run a split screen on the 9 of SI and DI. It works best for me. I run my front transducers attached to one of Rickie’s (Podunk Ideas). Da Ducer. Best way to decide on which electronics to purchase is go to a store like Bass Pro or Cabelas, and play with all of them in their demo mode to decide what yo want as well as read in the electronics section of the forum. Also, you can go to Bass Boat Central, and read the pros and cons there of each unit, but when it come to tournament fishermen, they are always going to go for the best but you still get good reads and opinions also. Good luck on your choice if you upgrade as lots to choose from.

I was on Lemon April 18th. Conditions were very similar. Was spider rigging with minnows. Wife and I boated at least 70 fish. We kept 20 or so. All over 13 inches. Prolly had another 20 we could've kept over 10. The rest were shorts.Attachment 299843Attachment 299844

Nice fish and great pics. Weather might finally get straightened out this coming week.

I expect Lemon to be on fire in a couple weeks. We caught one bug female in the shallows. Everything else was deep