Good Week On Joe Pool

Had a good week fishing Joe Pool Lake from pontoon. Unfortunately the slips are not as good as the open lake.

I caught 12" plus crappie every day I fished from the pontoon on the lake. Caught large numbers of keepers plus caught a lot of dinks. Only kept the 12" crappie, as I was catching enough of that size to fill my needs. Has been a fun filled week.

Wednesday I fished my slips with a couple of good friends. Unfortunately they are not biting that well at the slips now and the ones that are caught are dinks. It was still a fun day since it was fishing with friends but the catching was not as much fun as usual.

Don't know why the bite on the slips is so slow and of small size this week as I have caught most of my large crappie between 10'-14' in 13"-20' of water on the open lake.

I bet the slips will get better when it gets colder and hopefully gets more water under them docks . looks like you been on them good ,wish I could come out today but I am on a honey do list today about 3 miles long :banghead

Be happy you have a honey to do things for. Today was not as good for numbers caught as the previous days but I still caught 6 that were over 12" that I give to a couple fishing near me.

Nice catchn EZ......A 12" and bigger crappie is a very good fish..... Right now with the waters cooling they are feeding on the big schools of shad........ They are very thick and healthy and put up a very good fight.....I can't wait until the shad are not so plentiful and the crappie are thumping the jig like they mean it...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SKs Crappie Catching Adventures

Nice catchn EZ......A 12" and bigger crappie is a very good fish..... Right now with the waters cooling they are feeding on the big schools of shad........ They are very thick and healthy and put up a very good fight.....I can't wait until the shad are not so plentiful and the crappie are thumping the jig like they mean it...

---

Your right, except in Mississippi big 4 lakes where that is the minimum length, lol! I wish they would do that here!

Skip

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by skiptomylu

Your right, except in Mississippi big 4 lakes where that is the minimum length, lol! I wish they would do that here!

Skip

---

That would show the real crappie fishermen here and would empty a lot of live wells...... Some folks can barely catch 10" fish so it would hurt their keepings for sure......
I'm not sure that would help a fishery though....

don't be making fun of my dfw 10 inchers bro :Rofl

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SKs Crappie Catching Adventures

That would show the real crappie fishermen here and would empty a lot of live wells...... Some folks can barely catch 10" fish so it would hurt their keepings for sure......
I'm not sure that would help a fishery though....

---

They claim it did help the lake there. Say there are still plenty of limits caught. I just want them to put the 10" Minimum back on Toledo Bend. When they dropped the limits to 25 per person from 50, they also just took the minimum length off. They use to also have a law that said from I think this month until Feb. they could not throw back a crappie no matter how small they were. That was because of The Chicken Coop where they stack up in winter and catch them like 40' down and too many die when caught so they just said keep them all!

Skip

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by skiptomylu

They claim it did help the lake there. Say there are still plenty of limits caught. I just want them to put the 10" Minimum back on Toledo Bend. When they dropped the limits to 25 per person from 50, they also just took the minimum length off. They use to also have a law that said from I think this month until Feb. they could not throw back a crappie no matter how small they were. That was because of The Chicken Coop where they stack up in winter and catch them like 40' down and too many die when caught so they just said keep them all!

Skip

---

Wow.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ketchn

don't be making fun of my dfw 10 inchers bro :Rofl

---

One of these days you're gonna get to test those rods out that you fish with up here.......

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by skiptomylu

They claim it did help the lake there. Say there are still plenty of limits caught. I just want them to put the 10" Minimum back on Toledo Bend. When they dropped the limits to 25 per person from 50, they also just took the minimum length off. They use to also have a law that said from I think this month until Feb. they could not throw back a crappie no matter how small they were. That was because of The Chicken Coop where they stack up in winter and catch them like 40' down and too many die when caught so they just said keep them all!

Skip

---

Many, many moons ago when I was a teenager fishing for bass in Stockton California I fished a lake that was over run with small bass but anything over 15 " was extremely rare. The State changed the limit on that lake where you had to keep every bass you caught that was 12" or smaller but could not keep anything over 12". Five years later you could catch 24" and larger bass on the lake. The State resumed normal size limits for the lake.

So I believe it would be better to lower the limit to something like 8" on a lake such as Joe Pool to remove more of the crappie from the lake.

This would not impact what I currently keep as I seldom keep more than 5 crappie and only keep crappie between 11"-13" for my personal use. But I do believe it would increase the size of crappie caught over time on Joe Pool Lake.