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Last June crappie 6/30/20
What a great month this has been for me and the guys that went with me. I can’t thank each of you enough. 16 trips that ranged from 1.5 to 4.5 hours each and we landed 175 keeper crappie with many more short fish that will be legal next year or so. Catfish, bass, and yellow bass, bluegills and a few other fish played with us in June in addition to all the crappie.
I have given all my crappie away to others so I kept some today to help me restock and have fish for others later. Wanda and I eat bass because we like it much better than crappie.
Today, I returned to Watts Bar lake to plant a couple of bamboo hotels and do a little fishing as well. Mr S went with me to help drop the buckets. Lol. Matt Marsden, who is the owner of the American Fishing Tree has a place on the lake and knew that we were coming and wanted us to help him plant one of his America Fish Trees. We did that before fishing for about 2 hours max, but boy howdy, did the fish ever show up. It turned out to be the best day that I have had on Watts Bar since I moved away in 1976.
I caught two tarp size crappie. One was a black 14” and the other was a 15.5” White crappie. I released the biggest one after measurements and pics. Lebron and I had a ball catching these fish. I had a Blacknose 13 7/8” long. Almost a tarp and the first blacknose that Lebron has ever seen. All together, most of our 14 keepers were 13 inches or better. I measured them when I got home and had two that were 12” and smallest that we kept.
We had more White crappie today than Black crappie. They fell prey to 2” Baby Shads in Blue Ice and Lebron threw a whiter color and he can tell you what he was using. The fish preferred the Blue Ice. Surface temp was 81 and I didn’t check the current flow since we were fishing in a cove off the main river. The fish were in 18 feet of water on and around brush.
I had some 8 pound test nanofil line that I bought 3 or 4 years ago and never had used it. Today, I left my other rods at home since we had a work day scheduled and I knew that if that was the only rod that I had, that I would give the nanofil a fair test. It may be my new favorite line to fish with. If a crappie even thinks about biting my lure, I can sense or feel it. Grin.
I took one pic of one of the hotels that we planted and came back 2-3 minutes later to look at it and pay close attention to that pic. You can see fish already checking out the facilities and making reservations. Just off to the side of the hotel is a big stump and I’ll bet the big fish that you see there are bass. I’ll be back soon.
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