Fishing Forum

TP44 (Wayne) took me fishing today on Watts Bar lake, my old stomping grounds and the lake where I learned how to fish. We sure know how to pick good days to fish. NE wind 10-15 mph, cold front conditions, not a cloud in the sky, and chilly air temps. It was 62.9 water temps though.<br /><br />We started off on a dock in the main river that I had caught fish on in years past (about 4 years ago), but the wind was so tough out on the main river, that we decided to move to some sheltered banks. We fished a few more shallow docks without success and so I suggested that we concentrate on 20-30 feet of water. We were idling across a flat to another dock area when we pass over a big stump on a drop between 25 and 40 feet and crappie were stacked on it. <br /><br />I suggested to Wayne that we turn around and go over that stump again and drop a marker. It was off shore quite a ways. We were lucky enough to go back over it on the first pass and the fish were still there, so we dropped the marker, put the trolling motor down and began to fish. I'm glad that Wayne was on the trolling motor today and I know that it was a hard thing to do as the wind was swirling around that ridge from one direction to another and he had to constantly work the TM.<br /><br />But, I caught a fish right off the bat, the only non-keeper that we caught today. 9.75". Then I began to catch keepers and they kept getting bigger with each fish. 2 white crappie, 1 black nose crappie, and the rest were black crappie. 7 keepers total, 1 throwback before the school dispersed and moved back down to the 40 ft drop and just sat there. We didn't fish for them that deep. Wayne had enough for a couple of meals and I wanted to search for more.<br /><br />Alas, that was the only place that we saw any schools of crappie. Lots of bait in certain areas, but very few fish showing up on the graph. I had Wayne put a way point on the stump and told him that he may make 10 trips to that stump before finding the fish on top of it like they were today, but it will pay off sooner or later.<br /><br />Wayne, thanks for taking me fishing today. I hope that you learned a lot about deep water crappie fishing. Hard to troll that deep isn't it? emoBig <br /><br />7keepers must be the limit on WB, cause that is how many keepers that Sailfish1 and I caught last week up there. I'll be back. I had never fished that spot before. emoBig emoGeezer