Odin’s Day…..Wodan’s Day…..Day of Mercury…..or even Hump Day, the middle of this week meant a vacation day to go chase some Panfish in VA with a fellow CDCOM member. Last month VACrappieMan came down to fish one of my favorite lakes for Bluegill as a guest on my boat, so yesterday I went up to one of his preferred lakes and did my part to sore lip its finned inhabitants.
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?We arrived in style, loaded our trusty steed with all the necessary gear and set out into the clear electric only lake. The Motorguide trolling motor you see up front decided it did not want to cooperate by not locking into place when deployed so we got a much later start than hoped for. Luckily we had a backup clamp-on trolling motor, always be prepared. Note the Crappie.Com sticker on the front of the boat :-)
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The first big fish of the day was a drag squealing rod bend big mammoth mamma Gill that came in at over 9in. The second big girl came on the next cast and it was just as ornery.
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Back to back 9in fish, they were both full of eggs and quickly photographed and released. Without a water temperature reading I am not entirely sure if these fish have spawned once or not, and we did not see any beds in the shallows. Baits of choice were anything buggy looking or related. I pitched several size and style baits from 1-2in, black and earth tones seemed to work best for me.
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My partner threw a 1.75 larvae bait almost exclusively in black or green pumpkin.
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?The male fish were colored up nicely and most of my catches preferred the plastic to be tipped with a nibble.
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The Mountain Laurel was just finishing up blooming, the picture does not do the beautiful pink blossoms justice.
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Several more large males were found, and during a brief humidity shower the Hokie fan scored a huge pie plate gill that tested the ABU Slow Taper Special and the Varivas Twitch Master Nylon.
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The rain was welcome as the humidity in the high mountain terrain had become stifling. Several juvenile ShellCracker were also brought to hand and released, with the largest being this fellow, a long lanky 10.5.
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When we loaded up the boat and stowed our gear in the back of the truck my fish count was 28 fish caught, and my partner’s clicker showed the same 28. 56 fish for the day, one was a small Largemouth and the rest were the targeted and preferred Panfish. We kept 11 in the 8-8.25in range for fresh eating, his girls love fried bluegill, raising them right he is!
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