Crappies, Gills, and Eyes

Hit the lake at 6:30am on Sunday and it looked like everyone else has the fishing bug. I started out fishing one of my favorite spots, a group of submerged trees in 15-20 feet of water. The crappies were hanging tight to the tops of the trees and swimming jigs over the tops was the ticket. I caught eight 9-10″ fat white crappies and one 11″ black crappie. I also caught a number of walleyes and each and every one was 13-14″, all males. I had a strange thing happen when reeling in one of the crappies. I got it right up close to the boat when a big bass tried over and over to eat it. I would guess the bass was 5-6 lbs. but you know how they look bigger in the water. I moved to another area where there are submerged trees in deeper water and the crappies were definitely schooled in this area. I caught 30-40 and sometimes two at a time. (I use two jigs about a foot apart). The majority of the crappies I am catching are females and full of eggs. I kept 20 crappies and one jumbo bluegill. The crappies should move tight to the bank anytime so get out there and enjoy the spawning blitz.

Sounds like you had a great time. Pretty much the same story on the other local lakes. Just about ready to pop. I went over to Don Williams Lake just north of Ogden. Caught a few by submerged trees close to shore, but the better bet was slow drifting over 15-17 feet of water and catching them between 8-11 feet. No real size. 9-10 1/2″. Another buddy was over at Hickory Grove and said he also had good luck drifting. He did catch a few big gills close to shore with a piece of crawler.

Awesome report! Thanks Zamer. I am going to try to get out there later this week. I was afraid this weekend might be a bit busy… sounds like it was….

Dave

Great report. Are there many walleyes above 15 inches being taken? I assume that the numbers are large and that you can scratch out a few above the minimum length. NOT that I’d keep any, but we have a tournament there in early June and 15″ is our minimum to count. It’s been a while since I’ve been there and am looking forward to getting back to Big Creek.

There are some decent keepers caught but with the quantity of 13-14 inchers you have to be patient to catch a keeper. I caught a couple of keepers at the beach one morning (4 am) casting stickbaits while wading. The productive areas are shallows adjacent to deep water. Let me know prior to the tourney and I will see if I can’t help you out. Maybe I can prefish it with you. Let me know.

i

maybe

Thanks Zamer, I’m planning to get down there either this weekend or Memorial Day weekend to check it out. I’ll try to give you a heads up, I’d love to prefish Big Creek with a local such as yourself. I wish they would manage more lakes like Big Creek, lots of predators/high length limits.

I think the management of Big Creek is going to be a great thing if folks will follow the rules. Most plead ignorance when confronted about the rules related to walleye limits. I was out one day last year and two older gentlemen were catching walleyes one after the other and putting them in the live well. After watching them keep 15-20 smaller walleyes I motored over to them and let them know what the current limits were on walleyes. They had no clue. On Big Creek you are allowed 5 walleyes and all must be over 15″ but only 1 can be over 20″. If you see someone on the lake that is keeping small walleyes, make sure they are aware of the rules. To protect the potential that Big Creek could become, we as fishermen owe it to each other to help inforce the rules. Assume that the folks don’t know the rules and if they seem to disregard what you have to say, please contact the DNR with their boat #. I have attached a link to the Iowa DNR regulation page on their web site.
http://www.iowadnr.com/law/files/fishsbl04.pdf

I agree Zamer. The limits are posted at every boat ramp. I think most people know what the rules but some keep shorts either out of frustration (you can catch 20 eyes out there an not get a single one over 15″)or just dont care about bag limits.

What drives me nuts are they guys who boat 30+ short eyes and tear hooks out of them, over-handle them and then toss them back. The same guys wouldnt think of trampling the small plants in their own garden, but that is essentially what they are doing. What would you guess the number of shorts caught and tossed back is? 500-1,000 per week? If we want a large stock of keepers in the next few years, we need to treat these fish like the future trophies they may become.

Cheers,
Dave

Dave, see your point but I think there are so many predator fish in the lake that they just can’t grow fast. Maybe that is wrong but there sure are a ton of smallish purely predatory fish in there. It would be cool if there were enough that the 21+ part kicked in, but I don’t hear about that happening. It could be a challenge to get many over 15″.

Hay Steve did they change the limit up on BC ? I thought the limit was ( 3 ) on that lake with one over 20 inches. (15 inch minimum ). Please correct me if I’m wrong. Jim

According to the 2004 Fishing Regulations on the DNR website the limit is 5 walleyes.

I think the history of Big Creek’s massive amount of predators was originally done to control the shad. They killed it off several years ago and started basically over due to a shad problem, then when it was just coming back to decent, they discovered another shad problem so “kill it again” was proposed. Apparently there was an uproar so the DNR agreed to try massive predatory fish stockings, then the shad got killed off bigtime one winter and now we find ourselves with great numbers of predators with a fairly minimal amount of shad forage. I guess I’d rather have them in there and hungery vs not in there at all. Being an almost exclusive CPR angler, I know any 13 inchers I catch this year will be 15+ next year if treated the same way by anybody else lucky or good enough to catch them. Just something to think about.