6 Attachment(s)
We had a good time, 9-16 !
It's been way too long between fishing trips for me but today I was able to hook up with my usual partner and we hit the water today about 11am and fished until 2:45 or so. Air temp was in the lower 80's, humidity was tolerable compared to what we've been dealing with all summer. Water temp varied, some areas were around 72, many other areas were 67-68, which surprised me. Simply a wonderful day to be out on the water:
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We absolutely hammered the bluegills and also landed about a dozen nice crappie, most of them 11-12". The 'gills were beauty's, most of them on the large size, many around the 9" mark, hitting hard and fighting well. We were on them all day.
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This is representative of the size and coloration of our catch today. We found school after school of them, with a few crappie thrown in here and there, too.
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Ed landed quite a few nice perch as well, most in the 11-12" range. He was using a heavier ball head than I was and I think he was fishing deeper than me. We soon last track of the count, for as soon as we'd leave one school, we'd find another and nearly every cast for the next few minutes would produce that classic phrase, "Fish On!". We fished with a selection of Southern Pro plastics for the most part, stingers and stinger shads. I had the usual roadrunner on one pole, tipped with a Crappie Stinger; I would toss it out while trolling from school to school and single poled with the other lead head and Stinger when we stopped. I didn't pay too much attention to what Ed was using, but I know he had better luck with plastics than with his favorite Phoebe. The Phoebe did catch a few but probably 98% of our catch was on the Southern Pro plastics.
For his birthday, Ed's son had gotten him a new St. Croix Panfish series rod, 5' I think with a new reel (I didn't think to ask what the reel was). His first fish was a nice 10" or so crappie; he was very happy about that! This was his first outing with it. He loved the sensitivity and how responsive it was to the bite.
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And his last crappie of the day, a nice 12" fish, taken on the troll:
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We didn't keep any of our catch today but if we had, our cooler would have been overflowing for sure. I hesitate to really put a number to our catch today but lets just say, I'm REALLY glad that I'm not having to clean all that we caught!
