My trip to KY lake, past week

Great trip. Spend the 1st day with MR Dux. We caught some really nice crappie, and some catfish. Next day, went to Barkley to find the 'beds' for Bluegill that I had found in previous years. Spent 4 hours, caught maybe 5 decent fish. Then went up to Hopson's creek and found a bed of Shellcrakers. Caught only 8, but they were the biggest I've caught in my life. We had to leave the area due to the wind picking up on the main lake and worried about getting back to the ramp we put in. I think there were more there, but the ride back to the ramp was bad for my 16 foot boat and getting worse with the wind and glad we left when we did. The remainder of the 4 days we fished in Jonathan creek on KY lake for Bluegills. Man, tough fishing for dang Bluegills, but we managed about 45-50 7" or larger each day. No major 'bedding' finds. Just had to work 15-20 places each day an pick up 2-5 decent fish at each place. In the process, we caught catfish, and about 10 really nice crappie on waxworms. (for some reason, all 10 crappie were black crappie). If I had to redo this trip, I would have fished for Crappie instead of Bluegill. Several of the Bluegill we caught were thin, not healthy as I would expect. Most of the 'accidental' Crappie we caught looked pretty good.

Black Crappie ARE more prone to eating "bugs" (insects/larvae - terrestrial & aquatic) than are the White Crappie. Black Crappie also remain shallow longer (after the spawn) than White Crappie, according to the tagging study done down there several years ago. This could potentially be the reason why you caught Black Crappie on waxworms while fishing the shallows.

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Originally Posted by perchjerker108

Great trip. Spend the 1st day with MR Dux. We caught some really nice crappie, and some catfish. Next day, went to Barkley to find the 'beds' for Bluegill that I had found in previous years. Spent 4 hours, caught maybe 5 decent fish. Then went up to Hopson's creek and found a bed of Shellcrakers. Caught only 8, but they were the biggest I've caught in my life. We had to leave the area due to the wind picking up on the main lake and worried about getting back to the ramp we put in. I think there were more there, but the ride back to the ramp was bad for my 16 foot boat and getting worse with the wind and glad we left when we did. The remainder of the 4 days we fished in Jonathan creek on KY lake for Bluegills. Man, tough fishing for dang Bluegills, but we managed about 45-50 7" or larger each day. No major 'bedding' finds. Just had to work 15-20 places each day an pick up 2-5 decent fish at each place. In the process, we caught catfish, and about 10 really nice crappie on waxworms. (for some reason, all 10 crappie were black crappie). If I had to redo this trip, I would have fished for Crappie instead of Bluegill. Several of the Bluegill we caught were thin, not healthy as I would expect. Most of the 'accidental' Crappie we caught looked pretty good.

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My wife and I were down from last Thursday to Tuesday and struggled likewise with the gills. Caught tons of blue cats and a few nice redear. Fun as always but in Ky lake I guess we missed them bedding. But still had a great time. Tight lines!

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

It's interesting, I thought the redear were done and boy I was wrong. We drove over to an old nesting sight last night just to check if anything was on it and I was blown away by the fish I could see through my Ray Ban Wayfarer polarized glasses. I certainly was not expecting to stumble upon two dozen 1lb+ redear on the beds.

We managed to catch a dozen or so nice fish with two being gut hooked females that I kept because they were bleeding. When I cleaned them they both had plenty of eggs. I thought these fish were all but finished up about five days ago because I had a ton of company down from Indiana and they didn't catch too much.

Regarding your trip, it still sounds like you caught fish and had a good trip!!