Friday 13th Crappie Lucky

Decided to Single Pole this morning, less rods to wrangle than cranking, less hooks also. DrumKing fished this morning many miles South of me and said it best, “the fish are beginning to get in a neutral or negative mood.” The bite seemed short and the THUMP has turned into a tic! I tried some new Fluorocarbon line today, 4lb Seagur and while impressed with it’s invisibility and knot strength it still wanted to twist. By mid morning I was back to the 4lb Nanofil. Fished 6:30am till 11am and had all the heat I could stand. Water temps are pushing 90 again and very clear. I managed a small limit, nothing big and caught several dinks that were not even close to 10in.
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?The dog days of Summer are coming and my grandfather always said the fishing gets tougher during said days. Much tougher or much hotter and I will be staying home. Be safe and keep hydrated.


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​Good effort to produce some fillets during “dog days”.

I would sat that is an excellent catch for this time of year.

That’s a dandy bucket of fish


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Great job!especially on a hot summer day!and with a single rod! If I could catch crappie like that I would own a whole lot less rods,cranks,rod holders ,tackle Etc,etc ,etc !

Congrats. Nice report.

Looks like a good day

Nice read and nice fish.

Glad that you were able to catch a limit. It isn't easy all the time to do this at this time of year. The thump that turns into a tick has even diminished from that. Now we are catching them when we decided to reel back in an make another cast and the fish was on the line. Don't know how long it had the jig in its mouth.

I gave up on fluorocarbon years ago. I tried nanofil a couple of years ago and didn't get very many bites. I have tried them all and my favorite so far and what I'm fishing with now is Suffix Elite Hi-Vis 4 lb test. It is super strong for a 4 lb test line and since I see easily 90% of the bites that I get long before the thump or tic occurs, it makes catching crappie a lot better for me. Just my opinion, now. Grin. After 40 years or more of fishing for crappie, and observing how, what, why, when and where I have success, I have come up with this theory. Mine you that a theory is just an assumption based on ignorance of the subject matter. LOLol. When you feel the thump of a crappie bite, it is because the fish has already sucked the bait into its mouth and is rejecting it and the hook somehow snags on the lips and sometimes on the outside of the lips as the fish turns to swim off. If you watch your line like a hawk, you can see the line jump ever so slightly, I call it a tic, or it goes slack like it hit the bottom and you know that there is no way that the jig has had time to reach the bottom, or it just tightens out ever so slightly, or the line starts moving off sideways for no apparent reason, SET THE HOOK. A crappie has just sucked the jig into its mouth and if you set the hook then instead of waiting for the thump, you will most of the time find your jig buried in the roof of the fish's mouth near its gullet. The only time that there is an exception to this rule is when you are vertically jigging, then you will feel the thump at the same time as the fish bites.

Again, this is just my opinion from many years of crappie fishing. There are always exceptions to the rules like the example that I gave above when sometimes, the fish is just on and you didn't know how, when or where it sucked it in. Hope you try these little tips and I promise that it will help your fish catching. If you are a bass fisherman, learning to detect a crappie bite will enhance your bass catching prowess by about double.

Suffix elite hi-vis yellow line is sort of expensive if you buy the smaller packs. But, I went online and found a 1/4 lb spool for $38 making it a bargain.

Days like these are really working my consideration of a sunbrella on the boat.... Way to catch'em...

Nice report.

Great summer morning for you. Nice catch. My partner and I held out till 1pm. We did well also.