Cumberland 4/21 report

After kids sports activities Saturday, I took an afternoon trip to Cumberland with my 10 yo. Hadn't been this year on Cland yet so wasn't sure what to expect other than heavy fishing traffic. First ramp had no parking so had to move on and find another. Once on the water, we had to work for them as they seemed a bit spread out. With one exception, we never caught more than 2 on one spot. We caught all on minnows (couldn't get a bite on jigs this trip). Fish I caught were shallow and i'm sure ready to spawn. We ended up with 10 keepers and maybe 6 shorts. My son caught the biggest but he wanted to take a pic of me holding it as i had to reach down and fish it out of a tree it had wrapped in. It was a nice 13.5". He hooked one quite a bit bigger than that but it came unbuttoned. We didn't get on the water until 130 and fished till dark. Fun day

Question for those of you with more knowledge than me. Every white i caught was full of eggs. Every black was not. Any significance to that or did I just happen to catch black males?
.Attachment 299479Attachment 299478Attachment 299477Attachment 299480

I believe you caught black males. Good to see you get your son on the water and into some nice crappie. Congrats!!

Should of prefaced, I don't claim to have more knowledge but the darker colors indicate they are males, IMO.

Yeah. Those are males.

Sent from my Z983 using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

If all of the Black Crappie were males, you would have noticed the white milt sacs in all of them when you cleaned them. That one in the bottom row center doesn't have much of a black face ... so it would likely be the only candidate for being a female, as the males get dark faces :

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4e/25...be91d10d85.jpg

But, with the up/down water levels & temps at Cumberland .... it's very possible that both Blacks & Whites are just now moving into the spawning sites. :dono

One thing's for sure ... the Crappie at Cumberland Lake are doing VERY WELL, indeed !! :ThumbsUp NICE FISH, GUYS !!

Thanks for the insight. And now that I think about it, the lighter black in the bottom middle was full of eggs. One other fish ID question. The middle one on the right. Is that a male white crappie? It has the beginnings of bars on its back but never thought about the males darkening up during the spawn. Thought maybe it was a hybrid.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kybluediver

Thanks for the insight. And now that I think about it, the lighter black in the bottom middle was full of eggs. One other fish ID question. The middle one on the right. Is that a male white crappie? It has the beginnings of bars on its back but never thought about the males darkening up during the spawn. Thought maybe it was a hybrid.

---

Male White Crappie or Hybrid Cross ... either way it would get much darker than the females, in most instances. Some males get very dark, head to tail in some cases. In my younger years I experienced some anglers saying they'd caught a "Black Crappie", when in fact they had caught a male White Crappie in his mating colors. :Doh: Their black coloration was so dark & covered so much more body area than normal, the anglers were confused about which specie they'd caught.

Congrats on a good day on the water...great pictures.

My wife and I were there this weekend also. There were several tournaments (bass & crappie) going on so the ramps were really crowded. We had similar results...kept 7 on Friday all male black crappie (I am certainly not an expert but they looked like your pictures). We kept 11 (mixture of whites/blacks and males/females) on Sunday. As with your report all except one was caught on minnows...all less than 5' deep in 8-12 fow. I agree with crappiepappy...the crappie in c'land seem to be doing well and if the weather stays stable for a few days...they will move in to spawn. Hope you and your son get to go again soon.