I've been wanting to try Pineview for Crappie in the morning and due to scheduling conflictslater in the day, Satuday became the day. I mostly wanted to see if the morning action was comparable to the evening bite. In short, it was. I arrived and parked by the caretakers sheds in the Narrows at 4:45am and was on the ice and drilling holes just after 5am. No one else was on the ice at this time. Fished the same area of 45 FOW to try and make things as similar to my last evening outing as possible. Fish were underneath me, so set up the shelter and was joined by a friend. We had lines in the water by 5:15. The bite was similar to the evening and was fairly consistent until 7:15, then it slowed way down. Fish were suspended between 25-35' down. After the initial die down, the fish started biting again from about 8-10:30 although it was alot slower. The depth of suspended fish also varied somewhat. Still marked fish coming through at the typical depths, but as it got later, fish tended to be coming through within 5' of the bottom and there were 5-10 minute intervals with a blank screen. By 10:30 the bite died off again and my screen went completely blank. We stayed until 11 hoping that maybe we'd find a few perch, but none of the bottom mark hookups were perch...just more crappie. Standard lures and baits from my other posts worked. As an aside it was nice to meet Icerman on the ice. Always good to put faces to their avatars!
After Pineview was done, I still had 5 hours to play with and since perch were on my mind, it was off to Rockport. I arrived about 12:30 and spoke to some folks at the 1st bathroom on the west side. Their morning hadn't been overly productive and there hadn't been much hooting and hollering around them, so I decided to move along. Got to the 2nd bathroom and while I didn't get to talk to anyone there, I decided to just go for it. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, so even if the fish didn't bite, the full sun and blue skies were irresistible.
On my way out, I spoke to a guy coming back in who said the fish were there, just unwilling to bite. With fish present, that was at least encouraging. Being 1pm, I didn't expect fish to be all that active for another couple hours anyway. I set up in 36 FOW and true to form, the first 1.5 hours were slow. I ended up moving 3 times and finally by 2:30, the fish started to bite. Mostly 6" and under, but caught a couple jumbos too. The fish were right on the bottom. 2 feet up and you didn't really get any attention but right on the bottom, the bite was right. The silver/red Hali perch pattern with glow bead on the hook took top honors again. The perch did like small rat finkies in yellow and chartreuse too. They seemed to prefer spikes over waxies and worms, but perch eye was the favorite. Surprisingly perch meat wasn't all that well received. Caught 20-25 before I had to pack it up at 4:15.
A quick observation, then I'll finish. My buddy at Pineview did not use a spring bobber until the end of our morning. Fish talley was 13 for me and 4 for him. More telling was I probably had 30 bites or more to his 10, AND he did not sense any bites until he put the spring bobber on. We were using basically the same stuff, so you do the math. He was getting bites, but he couldn't see/feel them. Without a spring bobber, a person is missing out on ALOT of bites!
After Pineview was done, I still had 5 hours to play with and since perch were on my mind, it was off to Rockport. I arrived about 12:30 and spoke to some folks at the 1st bathroom on the west side. Their morning hadn't been overly productive and there hadn't been much hooting and hollering around them, so I decided to move along. Got to the 2nd bathroom and while I didn't get to talk to anyone there, I decided to just go for it. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, so even if the fish didn't bite, the full sun and blue skies were irresistible.
On my way out, I spoke to a guy coming back in who said the fish were there, just unwilling to bite. With fish present, that was at least encouraging. Being 1pm, I didn't expect fish to be all that active for another couple hours anyway. I set up in 36 FOW and true to form, the first 1.5 hours were slow. I ended up moving 3 times and finally by 2:30, the fish started to bite. Mostly 6" and under, but caught a couple jumbos too. The fish were right on the bottom. 2 feet up and you didn't really get any attention but right on the bottom, the bite was right. The silver/red Hali perch pattern with glow bead on the hook took top honors again. The perch did like small rat finkies in yellow and chartreuse too. They seemed to prefer spikes over waxies and worms, but perch eye was the favorite. Surprisingly perch meat wasn't all that well received. Caught 20-25 before I had to pack it up at 4:15.
A quick observation, then I'll finish. My buddy at Pineview did not use a spring bobber until the end of our morning. Fish talley was 13 for me and 4 for him. More telling was I probably had 30 bites or more to his 10, AND he did not sense any bites until he put the spring bobber on. We were using basically the same stuff, so you do the math. He was getting bites, but he couldn't see/feel them. Without a spring bobber, a person is missing out on ALOT of bites!