Crappie Fishing 4.19.04

[mnrstrider]

We'll after I got up today, I noticed it somehow looked to be a great day out, and since I had a long list of things I was suppose to clear up, I slept in a bit longer than I thought I would, so I did the responsible thing, I put off today what I could do later(everything), grabbed the boat and headed for the lake picked my buddy up on the way, spur of the moment, I borrowed him a pole and the tackle, I made no promises we would even catch fish, but it was one of those days, it didn't matter if you caught fish or not it was so darn nice out there....

Ok I had been out a couple time on this lake earlier this year, once with some decent luck, and Sat I managed only 2 fish , Today after the big storm that ran though last night I had no idea how it was going to be, I got to the launch, noticed a boat pulling upto the dock, so I asked them how they did, and they said they caught nothing, nothing at all... Well atleast the weather is nice right? :lol We loaded and headed out, water was a bit warmer 58 degrees or so, still murky as heck for this lake, found my spot, and marked fish right away, in fact I my X-51 actually picked up fish today, unlike the other days, only the flasher did... First fish came 5-10 minutes in, and my buddy caught a fish here and there for an hour or so, My buddy is a "tube" fisherman, was tossing tubes, and wasn't catching much, but he was catching fish, I wasn't, my standby lure a pink flu-flu tipped with a minnow, which worked well for me before wasn't today (or SAT). I finally caved-in a bit through this site and the people on this particular forum, I went to plastics and jigs, I was vertical jigging a bit, with a chart. mister twister, I started pick up a fish more frequent, we drifted in a bit more shallow, from the 20-22 FOW to 14-18, and then my buddy started just pounding them one after another, and a Chart&glitter tube, and my Mister twister wasn't bad but it was becomming obvious who had the hot stick, the flasher looked like a christmas tree, and the X-51 was marking fish non stop. We watched another couple boats come in much shallower than us, only to drift out to our depth, they were from what we could see using minnows and bobbers, and catching some fish, my buddy however was single handedly out fishing their boat on plastics, He had a fish almost every cast, it was sickining (to me anyways), I finally gave in a switched up to the tube to and proceeded to hammer them a bit more than the mister twister. We boated probably 60-70 fish in the three hours we were out with 85% of them in the last hour in a half, I used 2 minnows, and caught nothing on them, I ended up using 2 different types of plastic jigs both of which were catching a lot of fish, I mean I only used 2, plastic jigs, my buddy only used one, for all these fish, I thought I'd had to replace it at some point, but I'll be out fishing with the very same plastic jig in another 4 hours...

Today is the first day EVER in my boat plastics have outfished live bait, wow, it was fun. Fish ranged on the smaller side today with most being a tad under 8-inches many that went 9-10.5 and one biggin, that was lost at the boat, either way, they're all still out there swimming around.

You guys got me working the plastics now, look out, I'm a fast leaner .

I hope you guys got out, wow was it nice , no wind, sunny and warm, I even hear the fish were biting

Thanks for reading my long story :lol Hopefully it will help open someone else's mind to plastics a bit more.

Oh and Thanks guys!

[CrappieMagnet]

Good job!
I'm glad you kept your mind open to trying a different approach to your normal fishing routine.

Plastics are a wonderful bait to use.That's all i pretty much use in the spring and fall.They can be fished fast and slow.I too have caught lots of fish right after a storm.You just have to move to deeper adjacent water.Where they were shallow the day before,they just moved deeper.Now they'll move shallower.Does stormy weather affect the fish?Yes and no.It has'nt for me.
Sometimes it pays to try something different.Obviously it worked for you.

Again good job!

CM

[This message has been edited by CrappieMagnet (edited 04-20-2004).]