With the unusually cold weather here of late fishing has been pretty much off. Until this morning. Per usual we hit the road at 5:30 and were on the water by 6:10 this morning Some wet weather had been suggested so we headed right out to where we thought the crappies would most likely benefit from yesterday's near 70 temps but we found little in the way of active fish. A quick check of the water temp showed 57.5 degrees. Crappies should have been beginning to orient to pre-spawn locations but for the most part that water temp had us stymied, catching only a few random fish. We did shallow, deep, shallow over deep....everything that we could think of. At 10 we decided to head back up-lake to fish an area that had some protection from the wind that came up from Hades.....25 - 30 mph sustained.
We settled on a fairly flat area of 8 to 10 foot water with largely rock strewn shoreline that goes from inches at the waterline to about 5 feet in a quick drop. Fishing only about 20 inches deep we soon found one area of shoreline with some mild current that had 59 degree water and it was game on. We saw few beds being started and all of the hen fish were still heavy with spawn so we were on a pre-spawn flurry and managed to catch maybe 40 nice fish, keeping 10 darker male crappies for dinner tonight. A few 10" sunfish showed up too. I don't keep sunnies unless they are doomed from hooking and today one had to go in with the crappies.
With warmer days and nights in the offing the crappie spawn should be well under way on Monday when we'll hit it again.
