forced to down size today
as you all know the weather has been fickle the last couple weeks. we were hammering crappie and gills on minnows in the shallows. times were good till the cold and rain. last few times out have been slow with the minnows and the jigs have been the bait of choice. just the old 1/16 lead head and a power grub or baby shad plastic has done the trick. today it was nothing would do the trick! lol there was a guy playing with a fly rod in the wind. he had a lot of trouble in the gusts but he managed to catch 2 gills. he gave up after a while and i was contemplating doing the same. instead of packing it in and going home, i decided to look in the old tackle bag and see what i had in tiny chewy things. i found a ice jig box with some micro plastics from berkley in there. atomic dogbone or something like that. what kind is probably unimportant it was the size that was key. the plastics came with a 1/80th lead head and are only 1/2 to 3/4" long. it was kinda hard to cast in the wind but i made it happen between gusts. luckily i didnt need to cast far to get to the fish. the first drift scored a fat 7" gill. 5 more casts and 3 more gills, 1 keeper and 2 runts. that continued for 3 hours about 5 runts to 1 nice keeper. a few crappie in with the 7-8" keeper gills filled my bucket half way to the top with very little water. i figured i had plenty to clean so i packed it in and left them biting. im too tired and all warmed up now, so ill count them and clean them in the morning. lol
