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Crappie Masters - Lake Talquin Results/Report
Well, well, well....I have got too many stories to tell after 4 days out on Talquin so I'll try to be as short as I can without forgetting anything too terribly important.
Wednesday and Thursday we prefished and it did not take long to find the fish. Heavy fogs Wednesday and Thursday did lead to a fairly slow start. Fogs never lifted until 9:30 or so. Over the two days we worked all the areas from the dam all the way up to the iron curtain. We hammered the fish both days. Wednesday our best 7 went 12lbs and Thursday we had our best day and did not weigh our best 7 but our biggest was 2.33lbs and we had LOTS of 1.6-1.8lb fish. Prefishing was great.
Friday started off really foggy just like the previous two days but we struggled all day to find the bigger females. There was not a whole of keying in a specific location as most of the females were slap full of eggs and scattered everywhere. We picked up a few fish and at 3:00pm, just before we had to quit fishing at 3:30, we got our only triple hookup with 3 nice miles that we used to cull with. Caught them fairly shallow. When we got to the weigh in line we realized that teams had did as well as we did prefishing and that we were pretty far from Top 10. Friday put us in 25th out of 51 teams.
Saturday started of FREEZING COLD!!!!! After fishing for 3 days with 75 degree days it was killer. Luckily, we landed an absolute SLAB first thing in about 13ft of water. As soon as we landed her we knew she was around 2.5lbs so we threw her in the livewell ASAP. We fished on throughout the day catching fish after fish. No telling how many we fish we caught. We guessed that we had about 12lbs, and I think we weighed in somewhere around 12.5lbs and our big fish went 2.56lbs. Just good enough to put us in the Top 10 for the time being.
Weigh in ticked on and we finished 6th out of 51 teams plus won big fish. The Top 10 places won a payout. We got $800 for 6th and $714 for big fish. We sure needed that money after the tackle we went through this week.
I am a huge fan of litewire hooks and 6lb test because I fish Talquin so much and it is a minefield of stumps and snags. My partner has never fished Talquin and is a believer in 4lb test and reg hooks because of fear of losing a big fish. Needless to say, Friday we tied jigs ALL DAY LONG. Probably tied over 200 that day. We relined all the poles Thursday and after the tournament on Friday we relined with 6lb test and stocked up on litewire hooks...the rest is history. Barely tied a hook on today. Plus, those litewire hooks that some people fret over losing big fish held up like a champ on that fat 2.56lb slab of a female with absolutely no problem.
We caught most of our fish on blue/black with a chartreuse tail (2" hot grub by southern pro) on an orange jig head. We double rigged each line with a 1/16th ounce jig head with a 1/32 jig head about a 20 inches lower on bottom. We had our best fish in 12-16 feet of water. Males are up shallower. Females should really be in the creek mouths soon.
All-in-all this was an absolute awesome time at my first crappie tournament. I'm looking forward to fishing several more in the future. Crappie Masters will return to Talquin for at least two more years per contract. There are some REALLY great crappie fishermen at these events. The best in the country. Honored to be around some of them this week and learn a few things. We figured out what we done wrong on Friday. Probably cost us a couple thousand dollars and a legitimate run at 1st place...but I'm sure that's what they all say :whistling:
LITEWIRE HOOKS ROCK!
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