Fished at Cottonwood from about 7:30 PM to 4 AM. There were a few people getting some nice bass on worms.
I only got 10 crappies all night, but the ones I got were real dandies. The smallest one was 12", biggest 14". Interestingly, all of them were female white crappies. I also got a 24" channel cat on a crappie jig. It was a fun fight on an ultralight pole.
Here are a couple of pictures of the crappies:
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Wow!!! Great Crappie. I have never got into a school with Crappie that big.
Windriver
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I don't think they were really in a school. I was picking them up in ones and twos, mostly within a rod's length of shore. The biggest one I caught just casting out a 1/32nd ounce jig and reeling slowly.
I saw a bunch of small fish darting in and out of the rocks, probably spawned earlier in the year. I think the crappies were cruising along the bank looking for any small fish that didn't scoot into the rocks fast enough.
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Was at Cottonwood between 1-5pm today, wife was trying for the Craps with lots of bites but no fish. She was one of probably 8-10 people going for them but all with similiar stories. Only watched 3 hauled in the entire time there, very decent sized though.
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I gave a pretty detailed description of the situation on crappie.com, and a couple of people replied. It seems white crappies breed later than black crappies. So the black crappie are probably done spawning and are in a post spawn pattern. They've moved out to deeper water.
Since blacks are the vast majority of the crappie population in CJ, that's probably why people aren't catching the numbers that they were.
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