Chickamauga Lake crappie report. 6/04/15

[drumking]

I took a friend out this afternoon for a short boat ride and fishing trip. We got started around 12:30 pm and were out until almost 4:00 pm. We fished some sharp drops along the river and caught a few crappie. Then we went into a little cove and scouted/scanned a few docks. One dock was loaded with fish, however, the lake level was right up against the bottom of the dock which made dock shooting impossible. We wistfully, decided to just scan the other docks in this cove to see if perhaps there were other docks with crappie on them.

My side scan showed crappie in good numbers under a dock that we could shoot our jigs under. First cast under this dock, my partner came out with a keeper. I had a fish on for about 3 seconds before it pulled off. We proceeded to land fish after fish for a good 30 minutes or so. We doubled at least once or perhaps twice. We didn't keep up with how many we caught, but everyone was keeper size. The big fish was a 13" fish that we both had on at the same time. I'm not kidding. This has happened to me 3 times in my life time of fishing. We both had cast under the dock. We both hooked up at about the same time, but when I got the fish to the nearest post, it was hung up like it had wrapped around the post. I tried for a minute or so to get the fish out. My partner decided that they were hung up and broke their jig off. At that time, the fish that I was working with came free from the post. I landed it, looked in its mouth and lo and behold, my partner's jig was in its mouth as well as mine in the roof of the mouth.

If I can post pics, I gotta show this to you. Has this ever happened to any of you crappie fishermen before? We were fishing 1/24 and 1/16 oz jigs with Bobby Garland and Crappie Dawg lures in chartreuse colors. There was 10 feet of water on the front of the dock that we were fishing. I'm not believing the water temp gauge on my boat. Yesterday, it read 77.6 in the river and today, both in the cove and in the main river it was reading 83 to 84 degrees. I don't believe it could have warmed that much in one day of bright sunshine. All fish released.