Fishing Forum

Come rain or come shine, when it's Friday, Hal and I are gonna be on the water sometime, somewhere. What a fabulous day we had today. Where were all you guys? I hope you were all working and getting this economy going again and not sitting home cursing the rain. emoPoke We didn't see another crappie fisherman all day. We did see a couple of bass boats come out late after the rain slacked off a lot. Maybe they were out in a different area of the lake and we just didn't see them.<br /><br />Fish totals today: 57 crappie, 1 bluegill, 1 nice smallmouth bass, and lost one spotted bass at the boat. I got in trouble with Wanda when I got home for not bringing home a mess of fish. Goodness, we caught some really nice crappie today and we released them all. Just a few were under 10" long and we had several that were 12" to over 13" long. No TARPs today, but some heavy quality crappie. I caught one little black nosed crappie. That makes about 3 or 4 of these little guys that I have caught lately. The water temp today was 81.1 and it rained most of the time that we were out. We managed to stay reasonably dry most of the time.<br /><br />We caught fish from a 4 count to a 20 count with around 8 to 10 being the most popular number. We fished docks all morning. 50 of the 57 fish came from one dock. It is fun when you don't have to travel all over the lake to catch a bunch of fish. The bite today was just as subtle as it was yesterday, and most people would never know that they had a bite if they fished when the fish are in the mood that they were today. A few times, we had fish on and didn't even know it until we got ready to retrieve the lure and make another cast. The rod would load up and a fish would be on. Other times, the fish blew the lure out as quickly as they sucked it in. Hooksets had to be immediately or we missed the fish.<br /><br />I had the great pleasure of catching a very nice smallie today. These fish are so mean. Just wouldn't give up, but fortunately, I had it hooked really good and the drag on my little reels are set at less than 1/2 the pound test line, so the fish aren't gonna break off unless they get around something. This fish swapped ends of the boat a couple of times and down under the boat a couple of times, but my Mr Crappie Hi-Vis yellow line held true and the fish finally came to net. Hal did a good job of netting it for me. The rains let up and we decided to call it a day at 1:00 pm. We started fishing about 7:15 this morning. The fish hit good early for a while, then we hit a lull while the fish digested all the stuff that they had been eating, then they turned on again. We found the secret to getting them to bite, by changing lures and colors often. We also put a little Yum scent on the jigs and we would get a bite nearly everytime that we did that.<br /><br />We caught fish on panfish assassins, bg shads, ringer stingers, southern pro 1.5" worms, beavertails, and maybe one more lure. I even tried our secret weapon, but didn't get a bite on it. Not saying what this lure is. emoBig Maybe I ought to tell what it is and get everyone else to fishing with it and leave the bobby garlands alone for awhile.<br /><br />It is nap time and then maybe a high school ballgame for me tonight. I'd like to see that Smith kid that is committed to Tennessee play. Fat Albert said that he is a man among boys. emoBig emoGeezer