Think I'm learning something.
Last year I found that underwater brush and the floating out house were my best friend. Slaughtered the crappies there. Thin this spring the res's didn't fill, the brush was all out of water and so were the boat ramps. Well a cousin came over and we decided to try a new res about 15mi closer to home. Got there and the boat dock was high and dry! Backed down the ramp with cousin in the boat and launched it then he picked me up on shore. All the brush was out of the water so had heard about the rocks and decided to try them. Got a lot of bass but no crappie till we moved to a different spot. Suddenly we were into crappie, late afternoon!
Week later got on my favorite res, dock just in the water, with my son. No brush in the water so we tried the rocks again and boy did we score. We got 57 crappie and one bass! Following week I went out again and long days. Put in a 3pm and found my first crappie about 5pm. Water was 75*. I'm thinking now the heat of the day is not a good time to fish. Saw a ton of them on the fish finder but they were lock jawed! Probably didn't help the res was going down again either. Well finished the day with two 10" crappie and a 12" small mouth bass.
out 6pm or so.
My though is go either earlier or later. Last year I'd launch at noon, full res. Wouldn't start getting fish till about 3pm though and off the water about 6pm or so. Averaged abut 30 fish a day but much cooler weather and less sun. Now I'm thinking I need less sun, cooler temp and get out about 6pm to start! Most my crappie fishing has been done on cooler days with water around 60*. Think if I got that right, it wouldn't much matter about the brush being out of the water. I might add that the last day I saw tons of fish at 4' to about 12' and believe they were crappie with lock jaw. So anyone think i might be right?
