1st non-spring trip to Dardy for crappie

Launched outta Ouita Wed. at 0730. Ran to a couple piles in 9-12 foot of water and immediately started catching numerous small crappie around the edges of brush on minnow rigs. Decided to single pole deep into the brush and started catching the bigger fish. Fished 5 piles and caught them in all of them, 2 where better than the others. Bigger fish were in the brush in 9 foot of water and you had to be in contact with the wood to catch a good keeper. If I fished the sides of the pile I only caught smaller fish. Caught most on a mid south tube in Chart/Wt tipped with a small minnow, they didnt want the bigger minnows, must have something to due with the available huge schools of small shad present. I can say Dardy has a HUGE population of crappie in every year class, good news for the up-coming years. Kept 16 only fished for 4 hours.

Awesome report!!! Wish I was with ya!

Nice report. Thanks for the post.

Hope it fires up this fall it has been in sort of a slump compared to a couple years ago. Hopefully the Shad are back and so are the slabs . Thanks for the report!

Hey T. Crappie fishing is kind of a nice change of pace for me. I find fishing for crappie to be very relaxing. Kind of nice to switch gears from bass fishing. Good report on Dardanelle. I have stuck with Conway all year. I haven't made it to Dardanelle yet but you make it mighty tempting.
"Pac" Paquette

PAC, it has been a nice break after chasing green trout so hard for SO MANY YEARS!!!! They are pretty easy to catch too, all my bass brush piles have a bunch of crappie on them.. Dardy is not hard to crappie fish, lots of them. Couldn't care less about an old stinking bass now days... Unless they are big!!!

Thanks OS for a great report!

Great day and great report. Thanks for posting

Good report. Gotta get over that way and fish it one of these days.

Nice report especially with all the details. We're going to make a trip over there in the next couple of weeks looks like it will be a little cooler then.

Congrats Sarge

BS ! Big Minnerz! Bigger Fish! Just stirrin! Lol!

Where do you buy minnows at in that area?

you can get them at the gas station at the exit but they won't sell them by the pound, only by the dozen and their count really sucks. Most times I stop at Bates in Conway. I don't know of any other places to buy in that area. Hopefully someone else will chime in.

There is a new place to buy minnows on the hwy about 1 1/2 miles from the state park entrance where the main fish tourney weigh in site is. They don't open till like 9:00 in the morning though.

State park marina is the best in this area. Great people and they give good counts. Bait shop at Piney access on Hwy 64w is another good place. I try to stay away from the gas station at I-40 and Hwy 7.

Great report, but I love the pictures!