Saturday-Suffolk-82 crappie but no big ones.

[TapOut64]

I broke out my jon boat and headed out to Suffolk. The bite was slow first thing with most caught 10' down with a black/pink BGBS then I went with Blue Ice for most of the rest of the day. I caught a bunch vertical jigging a black/chartreuse wasshoppah tipped with a chartreuse crappie nibble but it seemed that the deeper I went the smaller the crappie were. Nothing at 1lb, quite a few small ones with most in the 9" to 10" range and not many between 11"-12".

Of the 1,037 crappie I have caught (8 different bodies of water) since July 4, only 8 of them have been at 1lb or better. Hopefully with the colder weather moving in that will improve. The last 4 months have been tough for me as far as bigger crappie go.

Interesting thing happened today. I was vertical jigging deep water and catching roughly 8" crappie 20' deep. Twice while the crappie was within a few feet of the surface a bass came up and tried to eat it. The bass wasn't that big and I think it was the same one both times, but then a short time later, once again bringing up a smaller crappie from 20' down, a much larger bass came up and grabbed the crappie. I went from very little resistance on my line to whoa. Fortunately for the crappie the bass let go when it was a couple feet from the surface. Even with as big as the bass was, I don't see how it could have swallowed the crappie. I probably saved the bass and the crappie.

[Anchor Man]

Where's the beef. The bigger crappie seem to be eluding you. At least you had some good action, the big fish are coming.

[NavyAngler]

Tap I had the same problem this year fishing brush but I started to up size my baits to 3 in tubes or bigger flys when i first got to the pile and that seemed to help with the overall size a bit.