Finally made a trip back to "the hill" after a couple month dry spell. I've been fishing Murray in recent weeks and the bite has been a little on the inconsistent side for me. I've averaged around 10 fish a trip on Murray and I really wanted to get one last hooray of catching in before the post spawn fish crank up on Murray. A good friend of mine joined me this go round. He always jokes that I ask him to go when I can't find anyone else and the fishing is tough LOL Well, he can't say that anymore! We did well with the fish and he experienced his best day of catching to date.
Our game plan was to tightline minnows/jigs in shallow water in an attempt to catch post spawn females on their way back out. We got our first lines in the water at daybreak and it didn't take long before we had a 14ft Southern Crappie Rod doubled over and fish #1 came in the boat. The bite was a little slow to start and it took until 9 AM when they really fired up. The fish seemed to be very location dependent and we stayed in a 100 yard stretch nearly all day. There were several doubles and even a triple or two. It seemed like the bite would get hot for a few minutes and we'd boat several fish then we'd go a spell with nothing. At about 11:45 AM we put #40 in the box and started culling a few smaller fish. We wound up bringing home our two SC limits and boated a conservative estimate of 60 crappie by the time we called it quits at 2 PM.
Fish were caught 3-4 foot down in 5-8 FOW and there was a good mix of males and spawned out females. We had a few fish in the 1.5-1.75lb range and lots of solid pound fish behind them. All in all it was a stellar day on the water! Now, it's time for a little bit of bass fishing and jigging on Murray. Tight lines to all!
Attachment 298567
Attachment 298568
