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Unexpected good results to an early start of my crappie season
Normally I start my crappie fishing every year on January 1st. A habit I got into from living in South Carolina. There hunting season was from 15 Aug until 31 Dec. So me and my buddy would hunt until we were tired of it, usually around beginning of December then we would spend time with the family (got keep them happy so you can keep hunting and fishing) and prepare our fishing boat and supplies. We would always get crappie supplies for christmas. Then come 1 January no matter what the weather we went fishing. Well I kinda keep that same thing going since I moved to Alabama (although I don't hunt anymore), but more because I long line troll for my crappie and don't expect to catch to many in Nov and Dec fishing that way.
Anyway I'm in temporary retirement mode (maybe permanent not decided) since 1 Nov and have been bass fishing a few times and toward the end of nov tried long lining one day and caught zilch so I packed it up and decided to wait on 1 Jan. Well Tuesday afternoon I'm walking the dog and it is beautiful outside so I say to myself, "self why aint you crappie fishing". So I get home check the weather and morning is low 30's high about 60 and no wind. Sounds good so why not. Well get everything ready, sunrise is 0645 so at 0530 Tuesday I'm pulling out of the driveway. Thinking about where to try first and decide I'll just go where I started catching them first last year (on Logan Martin by the way). I get to the mouth of the cove about 0620 and there are shad everywhere so instead of going into the cove I decided to start there. water was 20' deep where I started. By the time I get the last of my 6 rods in the water I'm in about 16 feet of water and "BAM" pole goes down hard and I'm thinking its a bass so I'm trying to horse it in so it don't get in my other lines and to my surprise up pops a 15" crappie! About 3 minutes late another nice one. Water temp was 45 degrees and not a breath of wind and I believe they had two turbines running. Way I stayed in that general area and caught 8 more by 0800 then it went dead. Keep trying until 0845 then went to try another place. Again within a few minutes caught a nice one. Stayed in that area until 1300 then decided to head home once the bite went dead. Ended up with 22 nice keepers between 12 and 15 inches and 5 bass and threw back about 15 crappie that were under 12 inches. Best color was 1/16 oz white jig head with a black and chartreuse body. Went out again today. Fished same places but in reverse order (dont know why lol) and got 20 crappie and 4 bass. Today they were more scattered about. Tuesday I had to see shad to catch one and today they seem to just be roaming all over.
