drumking, chickamauga, Crappie and bass, 8/12/09, Gator

[FishNews]

Wanda had a hair appointment this morning, so I went to by first backup. Gator beat everyone else to the punch, so I called him and asked him to meet me at Wolftever this AM. We got started off up river and somewhere just above Rocky Mtn club, we had to stop and put on raingear. Actually, Gator put on rain gear as big dummy left his hanging in the basement to dry from yesterday's adventure and naturally I got wet again. <br /><br />I did take off my more comfortable life vest to keep it from doing a Mae West on me, and went to my old hot backup. It sort of kept me dry. It didn't rain long. Then we stopped for just a very few minutes at the boils and got in on one brief white bass jump. I had two strikes on as pop-R and landed one. Then it was on to better fishing upstream from there.<br /><br />We stopped at our first place and nada on the crappie. Then stop number 2 produced several fish. I think that I caught 10 in a row and asked Gator if he had a hook on the end of the line. emoPoke JK Gator. You know that I love you, man. As the morning wore on, Gator kept bringing that ratio down from 10:1 to 2:1. We caught 48 total crappie, 5 bass, and 1 bluecat. I also had a big fish on under a dock that I have never fished before and for about 30 seconds to a minute kept him from going around a post, but alas, it finally made it around a post and broke me off. I thought that it might have been a catfish, but I didn't have any slime on the line at all. Maybe a big drum or large bass. We really wanted to see this fish. It was a horse.<br /><br />Gator is having a fish fry at a church function soon, so we kept all crappie over 11 inches (13). We had several legal fish 10" plus, but a 10" fish don't get to ride in my livewell. Of the bass, we had one 17inch largemouth and 4 spots. They heard the call into the ministry and answered that call as well as the 13 crappie.<br /><br />The exciting thing for me today was fishing new docks for me at least. We tried the dock that Gator caught fish on last week, but they weren't there today. It was a dock that I have fished before. We drove around scouting a little bit, measuring water depths around some nice looking docks and eliminated most of them. I really am excited about one particular dock. We caught several crappie on it and some of the larger fish. We had to leave that dock after a while and try other places.<br /><br />We used BG shads in crystal with a tail light. (Chartreuse spike-it for those who don't know what a tail light is). I finally had to put on a new jig after catching 27 crappie on this one bg shad. It is amazing what a little superglue will do to make these tender plastics last much longer than normal. I used to get one or two fish on one. 1/16 oz mostly, but Gator and I both caught a few fish on 1/32 oz on one particular dock. Water temp was 82.9. Perfect day for fishing. We quit by 12:00. emoBig emoGeezer