The Good, and not so Good Santee 04/17,18/2014

[Inkdabber]

Tommy took Thursday off, so he and I hit the water on both Thursday and Friday. Thursday we deiced to go try some shallow water jig fishing down the lake. I arrived at his house around 8:00, got on the water around 9:00 and found the wind blowing at a pretty good clip at the boat ramp. We dropped the boat in after a brief discussion of whether or not it was to windy to fish in the area we picked. It was a rough boat ride to the shallow flat, but we were somewhat protected once in the confines of the bay. The bite started out a bit slow for us, but we finally found a few nice crappie in some shallow grass. Once the bite slowed, we started another search. The search took us around a bend into another shallow bay. Several boats were in the area apparently Shellcracker fishing. We started probing the grass and pads with our Rooty Tooty 309's when Tommy received a thump and a fat Shellcracker came aboard. Another flip, another Shellcracker. We started fishing all the grass and pads that looked similar in that area and found Shellcracker in most. These are nice sized fish ranging from 3/4 to 1 1/4 pounds. We stayed with them catching a box full before calling it a day. On Friday we were greeted with even windier and heavy overcast conditions. We went to a different area of the lake to try our luck in the shallows and to try some brush we had in the area. The fish just didn't want to cooperate, the ones that did bite just mouthed jigs and lots of fish were missed. The ones that were caught were 10 to 12 inch fish, with only 3 quality fish in the batch. We ended up with 25 in the box, not terrible considering the conditions. Water temps ranged from 62 to 64.5 degrees. On Thursday, all fish were caught in 2 feet or less of water. Friday, the fish were caught from 2 feet on trees, to 23 feet on deep brush.



Tommy with a couple of nice Shellcracker.



Thursday's cooler.



One of each on Thursday.



Friday's box shot.