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Hello from Arkansas/ Sunday morning report
First off I'd like to say hello to the Crappie.com community from Rogers, AR. I've been lurking the site for a few weeks and decided to join in on the fun.
A little about myself, I'm 27 and originally from Texas, grew up in a small town by the name of Caddo Mills. I now reside in Northwest Arkansas since moving up here for college in 07. I work as a mechanical engineer and help design/build packaging machines. I've been a bass fisherman most of my life, and fished on the UofA team during my college career, but have sort of burned out on the tournament scene. I decided that I wanted to diversify myself as an angler and that crappie would be a good (delicious) place to start. I've mostly fished jigs and minnows in brush piles on the occasion I did go crappie fishing. This winter I was watching some crappie shows on youtube and stumbled across spider rigging and instantly wanted to give that a shot. I got rigged up with all my new equipment back in April and have only managed to go out a couple of times, and have gone solo both times, but I can tell you it's a blast when those rods start bending. I picked up quite a bit of knowledge off of this site that undoubtedly saved me days and hours of frustration through trial and error. For that thank you.
Now to the report: I got up early and pointed my rig towards Beaver Lake. Was idling into the marina as they were opening, around 5:30, got a few dozen minnows and ran up river. Graphed a flat that dumps off into the main creek channel and there were several schools of fish at 10-16' holding in 20 FOW. Got the boat turned around and started setting out rods. Before I even had all 4 poles in the water I had my first bite, a 13" white crappie. The next 2 hours were non stop, mostly 8-9 1/2" crappie but fun none the less. I was wishing at several times that I had enlisted a deck hand to help with rebating and untangling. About 9:30 it started getting pretty warm and the fishing had slowed. By that time I was running low on minnows and decided to set the last few free and take it to the house. All said and done I would up with 10 keeper crappie, shortest of them being 10 1/2" long, and 1 Kentucky that I decided to keep for what he had done to my rig. I was fishing a c&c style rig with 1/2oz weight with a minnow on top and a 1/16oz jig head and jig/curltail on bottom. I'm still working on how to minimize the tangles but still catching a lot of fish and having plenty of fun. Didn't take a lot of pictures because it was pretty hectic but here is one of my catch and one at an attempt on a 4 fish hold while they are still live and kickin.
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Thanks again for all the free advice and look forward to joining in on the conversations and continuing to learn.
ozarkangler88
