McBride

Gills, did you make it out Fri. afternoon? The wife and I pulled about 2 dozen crappies out of fallen trees off the north shore. Minnows where the key Most all where 9+ inchs with only a few small ones.

Made it out Fri afternoon. I fished the main lake area and parts of the S. arm. The wind kind of limited the areas to be fished and was hard for the presentation. The Temp was 63.7 just perfect. can’t explain why the bite was so slow but it picked up as evening came on. You could often see shawdows & then make out crappies following the lures but then returning to their haunts. Ended up with 10 over 9 inches. I think Sat warm spell probably more then made up for Friday’s slow fishing. Stable warm weather could make it really happen Gills

Got to love seeing the bite before it happens

got out again sat. but a lot latter than I wanted to. 4pm the crappie bit was slooooow, musta been a million boats out and every one was catching only a few, ended up with only 4 over the 9 inch mark. Oh but what a beautifull evening to spend on the lake. Wahly

Makes ya wonder what kind of vindictive b**** Mother Nature really is to have good weather and a hot bite all week long while I’m at work, then hit me with a cold spell the Friday before I can actually hit the lake!

We started about 9:00AM at the North ramp. That is, we snaked our way to the ramp past the 26,754 rigs parked all the way from the ramp up to the park entrance. Once we got on the lake we fished some open water on the North arm and picked up a handful of decent crappies drifting a steep drop on the South side of the North arm (I know, speak English Gianni). We threw out a marker and anchored nearby. I was getting bit with a plain gold jig, no dressing, and a minnow fished 10′ under a slip bobber in 14′ of water. Unfortunately, they would slowly take the bobber under, and when you reeled up the slack there would be no weight there at all, setting the hook only resulted in a lost minnow. I’ve never seen shy-biters like these fellas, but we finally decided to move and change it up.

We headed for the power lines and fished both the West bank trees and the East bay there. Picked up one or two fish each place. All the other boats were shallow on wood. Nobody was doing very well, maybe a fish every half hour or so was the most I heard anybody claim.

All in all, I’d say fish are widely scattered. Some deep, some shallow, some ready to spawn, and some nowhere near it. Of the 8 we ended up keeping (hit the road about 1:30), three were pitch-black dark (i.e. spending their time deep) and five were bright silver (spending their time shallow).

With any luck, I can get a warm-weather afternoon off this week; don’t have any idea what my prospects are of that happenning right now, though.

One more thing: In that bay to the East of the power lines, there were probably between 600 and 1,000 2-3″ gills right under the surface sunning themselves. With any luck, the next few winters will have these guys tugging on some waxies.