drumking, chickamauga, Crappie and bass, 7/17/09, Hal and his grandson, Jay

[FishNews]

I got to ride along with Hal and his grandson, Jay, this morning on a crappie fishing trip. The weather was nice early, got a little bit hot around noon when we quit and the wind wasn't too terrible. The fishing was very slow for us. I just guess that we are spoiled and we should be glad when we catch anything. We ended up with 34 crappie and 1 nice 3 1/2 to 4.0 pound largemouth bass. All fish were released. We caught some very nice crappie today. Hal caught another TARP sized crappie that was 14.75 inches long. Wonderful slab. He also had a catfish slime his line and break him off. He said that he couldn't turn the fish. Bigun. That's our story and we are sticking to it.<br /><br />We fished docks mostly, but did vertical fish in one place. We made one stop mid-river and caught 6 slabs in a row. Then they either got wise or the school was small. We used 1/16 oz jigs and the fish were deep today and very picky. They just about wouldn't hit anything other than the ringer stinger that I doctored up. You will see the pic of it. Very few fish came on other colors and nearly every other color was tried. Another big willow fly hatch and the bluegills were tearing them up.<br /><br />I had a great trip to Boone, NC with Wanda and the grandkids this week. We took the kids to the Tweetsie railroad and everyone had a very good time. Gabrielle will ride anything. She rode some rides that papaw won't get on. emoBig emoGeezer