Once again not a crappie.

Actually I got a couple small crappies later on. They have been slow for me lately and tending not to bite until real late either.

But the fun part of last evening, actually late afternoon, was carp on spinning tackle. A small group of SE Asian young fellas showed me how they were taking carp last week - on instant oatmeal dough balls; so I tried it on my own yesterday for about an hour and a half down on the Mississippi. Thanks to them for sharing their technique. It worked real well for me.

Total of 5 carp landed, three smallish but two went right at 30" and were all I could handle on the 8 pound line. I lost easily 10 or 12 baits by getting gun shy and missing my hook set; so I had pretty constant action with a whole lot of good solid takes and I should have caught more than I did.

Where I was there was no current; so I rigged up a 32nd oz steelhead jig I got from Nimrod recently and put the dough ball on that which gave the little jig enough weight to cast well, without the weight being heavy enough for hook shy carp to drop. That was enough to sink it too, but not enough to be able to tighten the line; so I fished with a slack bow in the line. The carp were not at all shy about taking out the slack either and the size 6 hook on the steelhead jig was definitely strong enough to hold the fish, too. Nimrod makes good strong jigs.

That is something a little different. I intend to go back for some more action this afternoon. Hopefully the carp will cooperate again.

Carp are really overlooked by sports fishermen but I will never forget the first time I snagged one with a beetlespin.....I thought I had a 12lbs bass on. Turned out to be a 3-5lbs carp.

In the James river in Va, I would always see these 30-50lbs class fish rolling on top of the water and finally stumbled across a guy that was actually targeting them. He would "bait" the area by throwing a handfull of corn out into the water and then lace a few kernels on a hook and throw it in the center. I copied that idea a while later and was pretty amazed to catch a few like that. Very good fighters - they make some strong runs when hooked.

There's nothing at all wrong with sitting back in the shade and wrestling carp, especially if more preffered scaled buddies play hard to get. On light tackle they can be an awesone fish to catch.

We were out for carp again this evening.

The instant oatmeal dough ball had worked so well that the two of us went through almost a whole can in the last three evenings. We also found out that a pair of latex or light nitrile gloves makes it a lot easier to do up the bait. You can make them a little softer, which seemed to produce a better bite. We have never fought so many large fish in such a short period of time, and we had quite a number of good hard freight train strikes, one of which almost cost my fishing buddy his rod. I suppose that in 15 manhours of fishing we landed well over 2 dozen carp with about a quarter of them close to or over 10 pounds each and nothing under maybe three pounds. We have had a ball this week with these fish.

This evening there was too much breeze for the light jigs to hold with any kind of slack, which you cannot avoid with the light weights we were using anyway; so we changed to a drop shot rig of a size 4 octopus circle hook above about 1/8 oz. Once we remembered you do not set the hook with the circles we started connecting pretty regular. We ended the evening with a double. Mine I just couldn't hold on the 8 pound line; so my buddy ended up netting his by himself.

I am amazed that the dough balls hold up well to bait stealers. Most of our fish this evening would nibble at it a while before really taking the bait; so those oatmeal dough balls stood up a whole lot better than I would have guessed a week ago.

Crappies are still my darling, but it is pretty hard to beat the sport in carp fishing when they are biting like they have been for us, especially on medium weight spinning tackle. I had dug out an older medium weight steelhead rod and it had all it could handle on several of my fish while still being able to cast the light weights we were using very well.

A lot of guys use canned corn for carp, but it is pretty hard for me to think it is better than the instant oatmeal, and you can carry over the left over oatmeal in the trunk without worrying about leaks.

BTW we take carp pretty regularly early in the season on crappie plastics, too. Those fish got shoulders and on ultralight with 4# test line your drag gets a real work out. For pure sport it is pretty hard to beat an old carp.

Do you erect little monuments for all those carp you caught, and then buried, per mn. Fishing regs? Or do you keep and smoke them? No, not in your pipe.

Fun! Z would love to get in on the carp. I may have to pick up some oatmeal mix tonight and go looking for them.

I took him out in the canoe later yesterday evening after a busy day. When you put on the lake at 7:45pm now days, there isn't much time after the paddling is done, since I haven't rigged up any lights. :) Smaller ones were near the surface and shallow. Larger ones were deeper off the main weed break.

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We haven't tried the oatmeal for lake carp yet, although we see some very big ones in a number of local lakes. So far about all we have targeted are carp in water with no current in some places on the river. There is a definite possibility of z tagging carp large enough to spool his spincast reel. The last one I caught last evening took off on a run that probably went 40 yards right off the bat, and the bait was out a good bit to begin with. That was on 8 pound line with the spinning reel drag tightened down about as far as I dared, not one of my ultralight spinning reels either. You get into a real good one and you have a tackle buster, if you don't have the capacity to allow those runs.

Looks to me like you and Z are doing all right on the crappies these days. Real nice one in the picture. He is becoming quite the fisherman.

We decided to sneak out a little earlier this evening and give that lake more than an hour. A beautiful evening and Z had a great time with some fair bluegill that were boiling the water surface all around us, and a whole mess of 10.5" class crappies. Second weed edge dropping into deeper, probably 15' clear water.

Where I can reach the outside weedline on some of the docks, I am also finding crappies deep down as far as 20', but am having trouble finding them that size on the docks I have available. The lakes I fish have had fluctuating water levels this year, often bringing some of the deeper breaks into play, and that means different areas from the breaks they use in higher water levels. So hot spots move around some when water levels change.

Only one 9" and one 10" crappie tonight (plus a couple that shook off coming over canoe edge), the rest were 8"ers and sunnies. They seemed to move in at about 7:40pm. Best color - dark purple with sparse green sparkle-flecked 1/16oz head with black/chartreuse tube. Adding a gulp nibble inside didn't seem to make a difference. Lightning showed up around 8:00pm and so we headed back a little early (metal canoes + little kid + bad weather = not a good combination).

Like you I have been finding crappies moving up over relatively clean bottom to the outside breaks, often hanging at the second one out from the weedline, generally later in the evening. Normally the smaller ones show up first, with the better ones, if they show up at all, often coming in at or after dark. They seem to be keying on relatively small structural changes, too, sometimes using breaks of only a very few inches depth or following a very shallow slot up. Often earlier in the afternoon, the area outside the weedline will have more of less resident dinks, where there is a dock to provide overhead shade. That seems to depend on available forage and often those crappies will relate to the sunnies that take up residence under the dock.

The carp are still eating their oatmeal, at least as of last evening. We had almost no breeze so we experimented with differing weights and even no weight at all last evening. When the wind permits the no weight seems to be a productive option. Oatmeal dough balls sink by themselves, as it turns out when there is no current to move them around and no wind to blow the line around they stay put pretty well with no lead provided there is enough slack. Then the carp seem to pick up the doughball and just keep going rather than pecking at it, until they decide to eat the whole thing.

We had a couple of fish pull off, turns out that is what happens when the circle hook gets its tip dulled, one case where the line was too strong for the size 4 and pulled it enough to bend it straight which pulled it out of the fish, which of course was probably the best fish of the outing.

One other thing happened that I have never seen before. We caught one carp with a lamprey attached. Small lamprey maybe 10" long and about as big around as one of my fingers. That one, probably a chestnut lamprey (just a guess) didn't get a chance to go back.

Lampreys - nasty.

Z and I made a last minute paddle onto a lake this evening which provided some crappie fun, even though we were only able to be on it for 40 minutes. Five over 9", with the largest a solid 13" (you'll recognize it by the smiling boy holding on to it). Still moving into the deeper weed edge in about 8-10'.

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Taking grandson out sunday early morning.... His mom and grandma want some dinner crappies.... No boat, but both of us have float tubes (he is 16)... Hyland worthwhile? What about bush? Please feel free to p.m. Me if do not want to reveal anything. Thanks.

No1son may have some Metro suggestions that tubes could access. We're a bit farther west.

I can't wait until Z's a little bigger, so we can pick up a second tube and puddle jump some of these smaller drops of water.

Actually, we are right by shady oak lake in hopkins. Have not had any luck with crappies there this year, so far. Nice bass, few northern, and about 100,000 tiny sunfish. It is really neat fishing with grandkids, as i got my son into fishing 40 years ago, and he started outfishing, and outcatching me 30 years ago. After getting "burned" early in the year, it is apparent that #1 does not share anymore.

Y'll talkin bout me, ol son?

Check your PMs

Ya mean if i would use the sight properly, i might find your wonderful, and very helpful info? That is a revolutionary idea... Doing things the right way? I just might try that in the future.

Sincere thanks..... I too have always tried the little, unknown lakes... Grew up in north mpls, and fished wirth when the aqua follies were still there. Fished it this spring from shore, and had good bass action. Think i will give it a go tomorrow, and report back. Thanks again.

:)
If you do get a handle on Wirth, that would be nice to know. Whenever I have been there, admittedly not very often, I have been less than impressed.

Anyway,

Luck to ya.

I'm a bit late to the party here, but I do have a suggestion for you, for a future trip in your float tube(s). That is if you don't mind driving to the western suburbs, and are okay with walking a little ways to get to the lake. PM me, if interested.

The spots on the west metro lakes we are working with now would leave your legs wobbly after kicking to get to where the fish are.

But there are always new ones the little guy and I are looking into. I've got one that is kickable and will start to pick up this fall. PM if you are interested.

Best

Slow going tonight.

The ton of <9"ers that are usually caught amngst the handful of larger fish didn't really show where we were at, and I may have only caught two crappies outside of a bunch of sunnies and bass. Z pulled in about 6 crappie, the biggest being 10.5", so he was still impressed with the outing. I checked my phone after he got it into the boat, and it was the 7:40pm "Crappie Time" they seem to "turn the light" on lately.

I was surprised at the lack of crappie tonight with a basically full moon, and a little bit of chop on the water.

For those who try and figure out fishing spots from posted photos - the weed edge we were fishing is not the one in the photo...that one is still predominantly made up of flowers...for now. ;)

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Was going to try wirth on sunday. What started as a real disappointment....my grandson was ill....turned into a blessing when i read that wirth had been closed due to e coli... Would have been tubing in that water with some open cuts and scratches....

Carppie, but definitely not a crappie night. Z had a great time tonight- "My heart is still pounding from catching all those carp!"

A nice evening of oatmeal balls, fishing stories, and secret sauce.

A big thumbs up to No1son & Co.

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