Found the fish this morning...

[ctom]

I've been checking a backwater area of the Mississippi for a couple weeks now and drove by it yesterday and last Friday. Ice still covered the area I wanted to fish on Friday but yesterday is appeared that the ice had receded enough to cast a jig/plastic back along the ice shelf so this morning my fishing pal and I hit. What a good call it turned out to be. 

My second cast got things started and for the next hour it was basically a fish a cast. The crappies were mixed sizes and after an hour we had maybe 15-16 fish in the 12" range.

A bonus today was perch. I have no idea why they were there as the water is about 17 feet deep in this location and we were fishing down to about 5 feet under slip floats. The perch, mostly in the 12"-13" range, hit the same 2-1/4 Small Fry bait as the crappies were hitting. The water right in this spot is featureless so those perch have me puzzled but noy complaining. Perch dinner tonight! I kept 7 of the dudes.

This was our second open water trip and it paid off in a big way. Thursday will find us right back at it. The forecast calls for rain and mixed precip with highs in a low 30's. It was 17 degrees when we started this morning and it didn't slow things down at all so some rain or snow won'tdo much to hamper us. Got new rain gear and looking to put it to the test.

[ctom]

Back at it this morning and things improved a bit.

11" fish on the first cast. Some of the remaining ice that was in the way on Tuesday was further degraded and had cuts and open areas in it that we could cast into and that paid off big time. Both the crappies and perch were still on the chew.

For the first hour we caught fish on nearly every cast. I'd venture a guess that every cast was at least met with a hit or bump. It was insane. About an hour into the melee I adjusted my depth by a couple feet deeper and that was answered by a solid hit and a crappie of about 14-1/2" - 15". We did not have a tape with us but knew that the fish pail had a 13" diameter at the top and this crappie  was easily close to two inches longer than the top was wide. It's shoulders were about three inches thick. I know it weighed three pounds. I think this is the earliest that I have ever taken a crappie that large in this particular location: normally they show up at this size about mid April. The thing was a brute.

[Fishermanbt]

Good to hear someone is making it out. That sounds like a stud of a paper mouth. Me a buddy have been trying to make it out to throw spinners for stocked trout but the weather has shut us down. This weekend is a bust again with wind gusts forecasted to be around 60 mph. Last weekend’s wind storm put my generator to work for 15 hours. Nothing got tore up so I’m not complaining.