What's workin' now?

[Corey Bechtold]

Just wondering what has been working for you's now that most area lakes (and rivers(Crappie Tom ) now that water temps have been reaching the 70's. The Crappies and Sunfish should be completing their spawning rituals and they should be settling into their summer routine. Let's get 'er going.

Corey Bechtold

[united jigsticker]

Freecasting in 6-12 feet of water!

Either a 1/32 oz Mr Twister or a 1/32 oz. marabou jig, letting it drop, and when the line twitches, set the hook.

Kills them Crappies all the way through August.

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Good fishing,
UJ
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[CrappieJohn]

Good morning Corey....Truthfully, I haven't been doing the craps much of late. The lake and the Miss. River where the bulk of my crappie fishing are done have been out of site, either with high water or trash in the water from the high water. We have been at post-spawn for four weeks now.

What to use? I am going out to the lake this morning and will lean on twisters and 1/16 heads and cast to structure where the fish are known to hold after spawning, drift/troll open water , or locate suspended fish and vertically jig them. Hair jigs will not be out of the equation. We have not had real hot weather much yet this year and a thermocline may not be evident and fish may be scattered.

As for the river, look for currented backwater areas. One of the most productive ways to fish crappies down there is to slow-troll a stickbait (#7-9) rapala along rock rip-rap in the back channels where current is obvious, but not much more than moderate and some wood can be found along the way as you troll. These crappies do well in current, are big and will readily hit the raps. I have caught them on #13's fishing for waldos during the summer in these areas. If you come across a pod of fish you can do well with jigs and plastic/hair...even bait. But....backwater fishing can be on or off so I like to move. Trolling in this fashion will show me if crappies are around an area in numbers and then there is always that chance of sticking a dude waldo. Best color for me in the Miss. is silver under blue.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[CrappieJohn]

All right Corey...here is what I found today.

Rick and I fished my puddle, the Zumbro. For the first hour and a half we tossed spinner baits looking for some pike action , but no luck. Then we headed to some sunken timber in 19 feet of water on an edge of current. Using eight different plastic/jig combinations, we caught crappies and big sunfish freely for about three hours! The crappies were mid-depth and hit well. Some hit so that you were just "aware" that something was there while others railed the bait. All fish came to free casted jigs, no float. A steady retrieve coupled with some twitches did the trick. We used ball-heads that were 1/16 ounce and tubes leaving the head exposed. The best tube color was purple/chartreuse and paddletails (Culprit) in junebug were very close seconds for bodies.

As mentioned, we tried eight different color combos and took fish on each. The two specified were way out ahead of all others. The fish were not deep yet even though the water was at 65 degrees. We could find no evidence of a thermocline. This particular lake has yet to reach summer maturity with the forecast as it is will likely remain productive in this fashion for some time.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[Corey Bechtold]

Great info guys. I also have had good luck with small twisters on 1/16 or 1/32 oz jigheads. For some reason the fish have preferred black twisters. Probably because it imitates a small leech. For some reason I haven't been able to find all black tubes.??? I think that black tubes would do great, especially in clear water. I did however find a black and white tube that I am going to try as well as some Berkley bungee Power Leeches. I'll see how they do as my wife gave me a "Get out of Jail Free" card to go fishing tomorrow. Hopefully these T-storms move out of here. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Corey Bechtold

[CrappieJohn]

Right after I made the last post, I went outside to clean the fish. Guess what I found....eggs. Tons of mature eggs. We had seven crappies in the bucket for dinner and five were chock full of eggs. Ripe ones. About a month ago we had males all over on nests guarding. The females were nowhere to be seen and the water was hanging in there at 66-67 degrees. Then we got a ton of rain, the lake came up about three feet and the only place you could find fish was at the grocery store. Then we got more rain and higher yet water levels. I'm sure what hgas happened is that the really large fish did their thing and before the less-imposing fish got a chance to spawn the temps dropped with the rising water. The extra water was muddier than heck....still is on half the lake....and probably silted in the nest-sites and drove the heavy females back into the deep water and the males from the nesting areas. It would sure be interesting to know if we are going to get another spawning period or if these heavy hens will simply re-absorb the eggs. These fish caught today were in no way even close to spawning water and displayed typical post-spawn behavior even with water at 65 degrees. I have seen the spawn delayed for a week or so due to dropping water temps, but never thought I'd see this on this lake. Now I have to figure out which period I should be fishing- pre-spawn/spawn or post-spawn. I'm almost thinking it is too late in the spring to get the job done, but then they do live in water and are not under the influence of atmospheric changes like ducks or geese. Anyone have a take on this?

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[Matt Johnson]

I've been using a lot of browns and purples lately, been working pretty good for the gills and crappies. I've also had to shorten the length of the plastic too, the fish just don't seem as aggressive as a couple weeks ago, been missing a lot of fish. Although poppers have still been hot for the gills, they still want to snatch those up.

All black tubes huh...Southern Pro has an all black tube, as well as black/silver. Drop me an e-mail if you need a little more info.

Good Fishin,
Matt Johnson

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[delmuts]

ok ! i have a question for you guys. as tom stated in his post that he was fishing a tube with the jig head exsposed; i have run into the times when the fish would hit a tube rigged this way , but not touch a tube rigged with the jig head pushed inside the body. what is the difference? the look, the fall, action ?any speculation on this ? del

[Bob/Mn]

Most of the fish this year perfured a 1/32 oz.,# 8 hook, inside 1 inch tube hung under a float. yel/wh sunny conditions and bl/wh low light. Making long casts, allowing the jig to settle for 10 seconds then punping the float 12 to 18 inches. The fish would take when the jig settled and was stationary.
Since the fish earler were spawning all were C&A.
<BTW> I brought some fish home this week for a meal and they still had eggs in them.Go figure.

[united jigsticker]

Tom,

I don't know what to say on this one.

In years past where the fish didn't spawn do to whatever conditions, they would typically just "dump" the majority of the eggs, and re-absorb what they couldn't extract. That way, they didn't have a long re-absortion period and have to wait out being "pregnant" so to speak for an extended duration of time.

A typical indictor is if the "placenta" is still in tact or of the eggs are just sort of "there".

If the fish are still plumb full of eggs, with the placenta (sp ?) in tact, then I don't know what the old Crappies intentions are.

I would assume they will end up dumping, unless you can find some males shallow playing an active role in assisting the spawn.

Just my opinions though.

Anyone else???

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Good fishing,
UJ
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[CrappieJohn]

Did my puddle again with the same results as Weds. Lots of fish, very short trip.

Del...You asked about exposed head jigs. I think the torpedo shaped slip-in heads are better balanced when inserted into the tube. I even force them into twisters and paddletails and they balance great.A lot of people will argue the point, but I think balance is a very important point successful fishing of plastics.

One thing you loose with the slip-in heads is color versatility. Heads that are painted and used with different colored plastics create new combinations of color that can be hotter than heck and basically unavailable in the marketplace.

Covered or exposed, crappie jigs can be used to create a veritable wealth of tackle options without having to invest a ton of money. These options are only as limited as ones imagination. Remember that experimentation has accounted for countless fish.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[Corey Bechtold]

I went out last night and found something veery similar to what CrappieTom saw a few days ago. I caught a 9" female sunfish that looked like she had a golf ball in her. Completely full of eggs. I should have taken a photo but I wanted to get her back quickly. That lake a few weeks ago had water temps at 69 reaching 70 briefly at the wnd of the day. Now the lake is only 67 to 68 degrees. I'm sure a good number of fish have completed the spawn but not all. I also caught a nice 8.5" male in a different area along with some post spawn Crappies. The weeds are really changing out here. A week ago you could see the breaks real well and the weeds were green. Now they are decaying and brown. The water is really stained now too. They might have sprayed the lake to kill milfoil? I don't know. I'll be fishing somewhere else for a while until things settle down. I also caught the sunfish of White and Chart/Orange tubes. I tried the Black and White and only managed a couple small perch.

[Corey Bechtold]

Well I made it out today with Bailey and Cole is search of Crappies and Sunfish. We started looking shallow and didn't have much luck other than a few Bass and small Sunfish. We shifted our efforts to some docks near weeds and deep water. Some floating rafts also proved to be holding some good fish. Bailey was the first to get on the board with some good Sunfish. I zeroed in on the docks and pontoons by skipping my tubes under them. I got into some good Crappies. For a good 2 we went to town on the fish. White seemed to be the color of choice. Later I switched to the Berkley 2" power minnow in rainbow color and it seemed to put more big Crappies in the boat. Cole helped with the landing and releasing of several of our catch. Watching him get the net and scoop in the fish was absolutely hilarious. Some key notes for the day were:
(Bailey's)
1/32 oz jighead White
Berkley White power tube
Small float 2-3 feet down slowly reeled or twitched back to the boat.
(Me)
1/32 or 1/16 oz jighead White
Berkley 2" power minnow
Cast around cover and swung back to the boat. Most fish coming on the fall of the bait.
Here are a couple pictures of the kids and their catch:

[Corey Bechtold]

Bailey's 11 incher

Cole and a nice Pumpkinseed

[CrappieJohn]

Corey...gottem hooked, don't ya? Nice fish. I'll be doing the unusual and will be going out to our pond this morning for a couple hours....I'd rather avoid the skiers and jetheads. We've been finding fish in a summer pattern over deep water/wood and are having a blast with them. Good to see the kids eating this stuff up...keep up the good work.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[Matt Johnson]

Cole is da man! Thats gotta be one of the coolest pictures Your kids are fishing machines Corey!

Good Fishin,
Matt Johnson

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[1Yogi]

Atta boy Cole!!
I was out on Medicine in Plymouth yesterday with CrappieMagnet and hit sunnies for about 4 hours solid. Fishing 8 ft with a pink 1/16 or 1/32 jig and a bobber with natural colored plastics

[Guest]

I was out on a small northern metro lake this morning at 5:30. We found crappie and sunnies both out in the middle of the lake in about 14-16 feet. They would come through in schools and you'd hit 'em for 5-10 minutes and then go 15 minutes with nothing and then start over again! We had a blast and ended up with about 20 keepers (enough for both of us to get a meal). No monsters, but some decent metro panfish. The fishing slowed tremendously after about 9:00 AM. Get out early!! Water temp was at 68 degrees in the morning.

[CrappieJohn]

We fished early yesterday morning and found the fish right away. The crappies were getting pretty hard to find, but sunfish more than made up for it. After starting by anchoring in an area, we went to slowly moving along shoreline with a radical drop-off and casted tubes and paddletails. We got into some really decent sunnies, many of which had yet to spawn. Water temp was at 66-67 degrees in most areas, but I'm certain that yesterday's heat pushed that up a couple notches. I guess I will need another fix by tomorrow moring and plan to head out there again. It was really peaceful until anout 7:35....we got the at 7:33....and then the boating forces showed up, skis and all.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[This message has been edited by CrappieTom (edited 06-30-2004).]

[Corey Bechtold]

Nice Report Tom! Boy those Crappies should be spawning by now shouldn't they? What color plastics were the Sunfish taking?

[Corey Bechtold]

It's pretty neat when you can catch almost anything that swims on these small plastics. For some reason I have also found that jigheads with eyes painted on the sides work better than those without. The jigheads I have been having luck with are Guppy Head Jigs. All the hooks are ready to go, no having to remove paint from the eyes. They are also strong. 2 years ago I got a 46.5" Muskie on a 1/16 oz jig and a plastic coupled with 4 lb mono. Sounds like your having a blast down there. It's nice when your "on" fish and can have the chance to experiment like that. By the way, how big were your Muskies?

Corey Bechtold

[CrappieJohn]

Corey....The DNR has done some stocking here in Lake Zumbro with a few of them being caught every now and again. Most of the larger fish are coming to those who are fishing below the dam at the north end of the lake. The lake proper still holds muskies and that is where I butt heads with them while crappie fishing. The largest I have taped over the past few years is 37 inches. The northerns in the lake can get ugly big and I took one a couple years back that I thought went about 18 pounds. This lake is not typical of muskie waters, but we have them now and every once in a while one will turn up in the lake.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[CrappieJohn]

Corey...The crappies had been spawning up until the rains brought the lake levels out of sight and the water turned cold again. For this particular puddle I think this year' crappie spawning season is done, but weirder things have happened I'm told.

The hot color has been the Junebug/chartreuse tail in the paddletail from Culprit and Purple/chartreuse in the Southern Pro tubes....1 1/2 inch. We have been tossing these on a ballhead jig (1/16) and allowing to free fall and then retrieve slowly with some intermittant twitches added. Using one or the other product we have been slapping sunfish stupid....and not just 4-7 inch models either! In addition to the sunnies, crappies, northern, carp, lm. and sm. bass and silver bass have been taken along with a couple muskies and some big catfish. Right now on this lake we are in a mode where these color combos are just plain hot. I did some cutting and welding of some paddletails this morning to see if there were any other combinations that might be even better than what I get commercially. This sort of fishing is simply the cat's meow and it is nice to know that regardless of what you might try, a couple colors are rock solid producers that you can go back to. For me, when fishing is like this it is a time to try new colors and baits...you never know when you might stumble across something that absolutely blisters the fish and no-one has access to that particular color combo because you made it. Gotta love these plastics. I have tried those colors metioned for sunfish in many other waters and have had astounding luck on both in waters from clear to heavy stained. The ball head jig incidently are chartreuse with small eyes. It is really important to fish these on a soft, light line so the line stays tight throughout the fall and retrieve....2 and four pound xl has been spooled pretty much in my boat.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[This message has been edited by CrappieTom (edited 06-30-2004).]

[CrappieJohn]

I took the Rickster out for a ride in the tipmobile this morning and he managed to stay dry, so we fished. Here's a "go figure" for you. We caught crappies quite literally on everything that was tossed in the water with chartreuse in it. We found male fish, big male fish and dark, in as little as a foot of water in what I figure to be tradional spawning water....and all the way out to 17 foot of water with the fish hitting near bottom and everywhere in between. There was nothing random about the fish being caught either...move ten feet away from the action and all you were doing was fishing. Cast back that ten feet and bang. Of the nine fish we kept and split for a meal, 2 had spawn yet. Most of the keepers were males and would spray when handled. What a yo-yo season. I almost got the boss dude put on television today too. Long story....

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom

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[Corey Bechtold]

Long story... What did you do, forget the plug, take out a jet ski with a bottle rocket, my imagination is running. Great report, it sounds like the males were in cleaning out the spawning areas for the females. A little late but maybe they are going to spawn? How big was your biggest fish today?