My first time longlining and a question.

I picked up a pair of 4 rod holders at the spring shindig. I put one on the front deck, and one on the rear deck and hit the water with a guy from work today after we closed down. The air temp was 81 when we left the shop and the surface water temp was 68 degrees. I quickly scanned the deeper water in the creek and it was pretty much empty so I headed back in the creek to the flats. No more than 2-3 minutes after we started pulling in 5 FOW, my buddy caught his personal best crappie. A nice un. 15-16" range. Fifteen minutes later we were so tired of our jigs getting balled up with milfoil we left the shallow water and wasted the rest of the afternoon dragging jigs around, with only one more crappie caught. We should have quit and started beating the banks, but I'm stubborn. LOL

I'm sure spider rigging would be a better choice when the fish are shallow but even with that, there's still the floating wads of milfoil to contend with.

It's been so long since I've fished the lake in the spring I've forgotten what I use to know.

Why is this stuff breaking loose and floating around at this time of the year? I thought it just did that when it was dying off in the late fall. If it wasn't for the floating mess that's broken loose, I could have kept the jigs above the stuff that's starting to grow.

Any way to fish this junk? Dipping minnows with long rods? I'm guessing a float and jig would work okay.

I knew it wasn't the right day to long line but I wanted to try out my newly aquired tactic, thanks to the spring camp. I'll admit, when he caught that slab I was probably happier than he was. Just wish we had been able to stay in the weeds and fish.

Welcome to longlinning on the big g that’s something you will have to deal with here between all the loose eel grass / milfoil which will be everywhere from now until this time next year it never goes away! From the coots that pull it up to all the green carp guys and all the other boat traffic . Only hope to get out of it is find a wind blow cove that the wind has blow in all night and it will have most of it pushed to one side until folks run through it or until the wind changes directions or if we get a big rain and they pull lots of water it just goes from here to their to everywhere. Sometimes you can run a swivel above your jigs and it will catch on that instead of your jigheads! Good luck and Tight lines buddy!

Awesome! LOL

Those Coosa river guys don't have to worry about that!

So, given that the fish are shallow, how would you fish what I fished today? There were fish there, but no way to pull jigs through that mess. Spider rig or casting jigs under floats, or something totally different?

I would prolly use a float you could spider rig it and prolly do alright but you still have to deal with the constant grass just because it’s like a suction cup it sticks to every thing it touches .

Thanks for the info. I may have to make some wings for my boat like a hay rake and get that mess out of the way. LOL

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Originally Posted by FurFlyin

Awesome! LOL

Those Coosa river guys don't have to worry about that!

So, given that the fish are shallow, how would you fish what I fished today? There were fish there, but no way to pull jigs through that mess. Spider rig or casting jigs under floats, or something totally different?

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Fur I'll deal with the milfoil for the quality of fish

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Originally Posted by footballcoach

Fur I'll deal with the milfoil for the quality of fish

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I might need to tag along with you once and see how you deal with it. :biggrin

you will be welcome my friend. Even if you are a barner

LOL.

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Originally Posted by footballcoach

you will be welcome my friend. Even if you are a barner

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Not anything wrong with that.


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That grass is a double edged sword. It's the reason that guntersvillie is good but it's a pain to fish. You might try long lineing to find the fish then change over to a float. I really don't know about guntersvillie I've never fished it but I haven't had any luck casting where I long line but I don't long line in 5ft on my lakes.

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Glenn, I wouldn't have longlined if I had been rigged up to spider rig. I've got to get some more bases so I can move my rod holders around.

I'm still trying to figure out how to fish that area by pushing, pulling or spider rigging but it is/was thick with balls of floating grass. There are NO features to hold fish, other than the grass. It's just a big 10 acre flat area, all about 5 feet deep. I don't know where they spawn so it would be hunt and peck with a float and jig. I know the crappie are there, I just have to find them.

You can actually long line with floats on your rig too. They do it other places as well. Just work around the floating salad.

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Originally Posted by Bob D

You can actually long line with floats on your rig too. They do it other places as well. Just work around the floating salad.

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I'll try the floats, but I think in that area I'm gonna have to single pole fish. I don't know why that mifoil is coming off the bottom in so many chunks. There are 1000's of them about the size of a volleyball, broke loose from the bottom and drifting around. If I fish this area multi pole style, I'm gonna have to modify a hay rake and hook it to the front of my boat.