Active night after the rain, 9-24

We had a good bit of rain overnight Thursday in to Friday morning. Finally cleared out about 10 am and I began to think about wetting a line after work. After 2-3" of rain, I wasn't sure how the bite would be.
I pushed off from shore at 4pm, with air and water temp both at 68. Bit of a breeze, but the water clarity was not as bad as I expected, although it was stained more than usual.
I clipped on a pearl colored split tail from Bobby Garland along with the Stoll'r and the curly tail grub I've used on this water recently. Thanks, Pico lures, for the tip of white baits in stained waters; it shows on the "Featured Guests" forum as the last question posed when he did the live Q&A a while back.
Anyway, that pearl lure would stay on the entire trip as both the bluegill and crappie wouldn't leave it alone; it was clearly the lure of choice on this trip. Here are a few pictures of what came home with me.

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Here is that last one on the ruler, big fish of the night.

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The difference in the bite between the 'gills and the crappie was something last night. The crappie bite was very light while trolling, just a little twitch of the rod tip while moving along while the 'gills would practically rip the pole out of the boat. I made it a full night, fishing right up until 7pm before pulling in the lines and calling it a night.

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I kept 16 nice crappie, from 9" up to 13", with most of them 11-12", along with 8 big bluegill. I stopped keeping the 'gills when I realized how good the crappie bite was going to be. I tossed back a couple of smaller crappie, maybe half a dozen or so. Bluegill?? Too many to keep track of, easily 25+ went back in for another trip; I was busy all night long and loved every minute of it!

Great trip. Outstanding results for just a short trip. keep up the great work. Tight lines.

https://www.crappie.com/crappie/atta...a-img_1409-jpg

Such purdy marking and color for sure.

Great catch. That's a good tip about using a white lure. I will try to remember that.

I love it when I read about folks having a great time out on the water.

Beautiful pictures, thanks for taking me fishing!

Nice catch....pictures too...thanks for sharing

Great box fish of fish. Good looking sky as well

That’s a fantastic evening! Can you give me some of the basics of how you troll for them with jigs? I’m pretty good at catching them at night but not very successful in daylight.

I like to think I'm not doing anything special, simply tossing out my lines and rowing around. If I'm working near the weed lines I'll use 1/32 oz. lead jig heads with various plastics. Usually in the 12-16' water depth range. The Roadrunner spinner has worked well for me this year in that scenario. I have no power propulsion on my rowboat, just me rowing and I try to keep my speed around .7-.8 according to my graph's GPS. I use baits in the 2" and smaller category.

Same speed but 1/16 oz. heads are working for me now in some deeper water, more in the 18-24' depth range. Here in CT we can use 3 lines except in some special areas so I usually run 3 different plastics to find something that's working. I try to run parallel to the edges rather than up and over them or from the shallows dropping over the edge in to the deep.

I tend to fish more in the evening after work rather than in the early mornings. I seem to boat more fish that way but that's probably 'cause I have more experience in the evenings. To my way of thinking, they are getting hungry from laying around all day waiting to put on the feedbag in the evening, rather than having fed all night and looking to take it easy for the rest of the day when I hit the water in the morning. Whether that's true or not I have no idea but that's my story and I'm sticking to it!


I lean my rods against the back seat (one of my recent posts from a morning trip has a picture of my setup) and try to keep them within an easy, quick grab; when I see a change in the rod tip, I have to drop the oars and grab the correct rod or rods, if it's a double hookup. I like the rods in the 6 to 6 1/2' length, light action tip helps see the strike even when they are light. Despite my handle of 6 pound test, I've dropped to 4 lb. test mono on all my rods.

One thing I feel is key is my mapping. I've mapped a lot of my fishing areas using the Autochart Live function on my Humminbird. The contour maps I've found of some of my water's are not at all accurate. My mapping has helped me stay in the correct depth and contour ins and outs along the structure edges. Hopefully, you have some sort of depth finder to help keep you on track.

That's pretty much my take on what I'm doing. I'm not sure how widespread the crappie population is there in VT or where you're at. I used to own land up in the Cabot area but at the time, my interest was in upland bird hunting and not fishing so I'm not familiar with the crappie situation there. We have another NE board poster from VT who I believe is more toward the southern end on the CT river system. When I think VT, I think trout, bluegill and perch for most places and lots of bigger stuff in places like Lake Champlain.

Thank you for taking the time to put that excellent post together! How far behind the boat do you generally run your jigs? I tried trolling earlier this year using small crank baits but I only caught bass and rainbows. I will definitely try it your way the next time I’m out in daylight.

The area around me in Southwest VT has quite a few lakes and ponds with crappies. I’m not sure about the rest of the state but we definitely have a lot of trout lakes and ponds. Southern Lake Champlain has good numbers of both black and white crappie but the water is always colored up and it requires a bait put right on their nose. Most of the lakes also have yellow perch which are probably the most popular ice fishing quarry. I’ve been ice fishing for crappies for awhile but I bought a boat this spring and I’m just learning the open water game.

I've never trolled crank baits, only jig heads with plastics threaded on. As far as how far behind, I just cast them out as far as I can and call it good. I do catch a variety of fish on them, it's not just the panfish that bite them.

For the stained water, try using a bait that has a lot of flutter, like a curly tail or spinner head; something to make a bit of a fuss that they can sense rather than simply see. The Bobby Garland Stroll'r and Swimm'r have worked well recently, as well as the Southern Pro 2" curly tail grub. But most any brand should provide the same actions.