We did our backwater location again yesterday to find dropping water levels and warmer water....and the total lack of decent sized fish. I knew the better fish would only be in this area right after ice out and for a limited time. The better fish have shuffled off to pre-spawn areas now while the lesser fish were still; pretty much willing to spank anything we threw out there for them. In our hour and a half window we c/r'd maybe 50 fish.
On our trek home I suggested stopping down at our early season dock and found crappies there in a big way and did a numbers repeat in 45 minutes of messing with them. I kept 6 11 1/2" fish for din-din. I'll be leaving in a half an hour for the dock and some early fishing. The dock fish were either purple or junebug oriented, both colors with chartreuse tails.
I looked at my records for the last forty years of fishing on the lake with the dock and this is the third earliest that we've seen fishing like this there. The one commonality in those three seasons is an early, radical warm-up, just like we're seeing here of late. We've seen the last four days clipping the 80 degree mark. I've already determined that last year's sunscreen is past due....sun burn city yesterday. Got rain and storms floating around here today but there's a dry slot for a couple hours now and I'm fishing it.