Cumberland-report and question

I went to Cumberland 11/17 by myself. Single poling. Was there early and fished until around 3:00. I didn't do great but ended up with with 7 keepers and maybe 9 shorts. Plus I lost a few nice ones late in the day. last year i was catching alot more fish than i'm catching this year at this time. I could tell the lake had come up probably 6 feet since my last visit so that probably didn't help either although my last visit was terrible with just 2 crappie all day.

My fish were typically in around 15-20' over as deep as 38' of water. I looked shallower but found nothing. I caught a few on typical slip bobber rigs, some dropping minnows right on them, and some on a small jigging spoon. I caught zero on jigs although I didn't really stick with that approach much.

A couple questions. First, if you were out there on Saturday, i would love to know how you did.

Second, in the picture you can see a tree i had caught fish on last year. I finally found it as it is a very singular trunked non-interesting tree. you can see a pile of crappie on it between 15 and 25'. I caught a couple right away on a typical slip bobber and minnow. Then they stopped hitting that. I then had a dropshot style minnow rig and caught about 4 or 5 more when i sat right over top of them. It seems to me that sometimes they prefer that to the more free swimming bobber rigged minnow. This was a good test for that. At the time i was doing that i had a bobber in a rod holder at the same depth and they wouldn't touch it. I would put that drop shot down and catch one immediately until they stopped biting.

Now, for you experts. Given that it was a tough day and this was really the first spot I found with a good concentration of crappie, what would you have done after the bite slowed? Any new tricks i should have tried? Or leave after catching about 7. There had to have been 35+ in that school. I didn't try the jigging spoon there and probably should have. It helped me catch a few more fish in a spot similar to this that i found later in the day. But the bite didn't seem easy for me. had to work for them all and get it right in their face.

I didnt go Saturday but I did go sunday. We had 34 keepers I think 7 was the most we got off of 1 spot. We was single poling and had just about equal amounts on minnows and jigs. We fished about the same depths as you said you did. Day in and day if you got that many fish off of the tree in your picture that was really good especially if they was black crappie.

Yeah, last year i had about a dozen larger trees that routinely looked like the one above. I would just run each of them catching up to 15 per tree. This year though, i'm hitting a lot of them with zero so my milk run hasn't been as effective. I've only been the two times though this fall a couple weeks apart. I'm going on Friday but heading to the lower end bass fishing. Going to leave the crappie gear at home or i'll get distracted :)

I caught a mixed bag as far as black/white go. i think 4 of the 7 keepers were whites.

Not so much with live bait but when fishing with jigs if I find my bite has died I will add crappie nibbles and almost always will pick up a few more fish. It's likw
e like someone flipped a switch and turned them back on.