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Late June crappie 6/29/2020
I took my brother in law, Leon, on a crappie trip per his request and I was getting a little concerned as the fish were not in a playful mood at all. We hit a good offshore structure and it was loaded with fish, but they were not biting any color and I changed lure color after every third cast.
After 30 minutes or more of casting practice, I finally told Leon that we needed to downsize our lures. I went to a 1/48 oz Itty Bitty Slab Slayer on the top of a double rig with a 3/32 ounce Jig with a Blue Ice Baby Shad to get the lure down to the fish in the 20-25 foot depths that they were holding in. First cast and I caught a 15.25” White crappie on the Itty Bitty lure. If fishing is tough or slow, try downsizing. It works for me really well.
But the bite was still very slow so we hit a few different spots with no luck and it was getting late in the solunar feeding period, and the sun was getting hot so I suggested that we go back to spot number one and fish until time for us to quit. Good move. The same fish that would not bite before the feeding period, turned into ravenous wolves at the tail end of the period.
We actually stayed an hour past our pre determined stopping time because the fish would not leave us alone. A mixed bag of crappie, yellow bass, white bass and a lone Blue catfish. Our totals were 18 keeper crappie, 6 yellow bass, one White bass that I caught on the top jig with a nice keeper crappie on the bottom jig. One Blue catfish and many short crappie.
The current when we started was only 20,000 but TVA kicked it up to 33,000 and that is probably why the fish bite got better. Who knows for sure? I double rigged Baby Shads with a Blue Ice catching most fish, but the Monkey Milk top jig caught a few fish as well. Bites were extremely subtle and Leon isn’t that experienced in the DK method of crappie fishing. Grin. I coached him along until he was finally able to land a couple of nice keepers. I told him not to fall in love with this technique because other days they prefer a different presentation.
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