02-11-2024, 11:21 PM
(02-11-2024, 10:59 PM)Jig-fisher Wrote: I just finished fileting yesterday's catch. Not much in the crappie at all. Could be zooplankton, but nothing much was coming out of them. They did have egg sacs, but not like the perch where they are bloated with them.
The perch were indeed bloated with their egg sacs. But I had several spit out baby fish about 1.5 to 2 inches long. They were too far digested to make an ID on them. I tried jigs about that size, but they were uncharacteristicly still picky. It may have been more about the weather pattern. Post cold front and rapidly dropping temps, clear and cold where it was stormy most of the week probably put them on a cool mood.
The small edibles were probably young of the year perch. Most of the crappie and perch schools follow the baby perch when they go deep in the winter...for the zooplankton.
We fisherfolk types are quick to blame the weather for fish attitudes, but it is true. They are affected by rapid ups and downs in the barometer. That's why I usually try to plan my trips for at least two or three days after a front has passed through. But with our recent cycles of weather there is seldom much time between weather anomalies.
Still...better to have fished and missed than never to have fished at all.