Crappies were popping this morning

This damn work thing has really been killing my fishing. Reading these reports make me jealous

Sounds like a great morning Jimmy!

And here I sit on 40 inches of ice. Ugh!

Was out west by Howard lake Waverly area this afternoon, saw a couple kids in their boat fishing.
Funny, some lakes wide open and some still almost all locked up and they were right across the road from each other.

14 inch crappie is bigger than any crappie I’ve ever caught.

And he acts like it’s no big deal.

gim wrote:

14 inch crappie is bigger than any <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>crappie I’ve ever caught.

And he acts like it’s no big deal. <m

Tom’s the crappie master for a reason.

Jimmy Jones wrote:

Everything came on plastic. Junebug with a chartreuse tail. Purple 1/16 jig.

Under one of your floats or just cast and retrieve?

Hunting24seven wrote:

Under one of your floats or just cast and retrieve?

The water temp was hardly 42 degrees so the fish will be very depth specific and I used on of my floats to stay in about 5 1/2 feet. Water depth was about 17 feet. There’s some buried structure on this spot and the fish were holding just off it at the depth mentioned. Deeper or shallower and nothing.

And Gim, the Mississippi is full of crappies of that size. Both of them today had several shad about 4″ in their stomachs. Last fall the same sized fish had 3″ shad in them lol. Things grow over the winter I guess. If I want to see crappies in the 14-15 inch range during the summer months, I head right to pool 5. Maybe lower pool 4. I believe the crappies we took today are transitioning from the winter haunts to the early pre-spawn locations and that accounts for the two chunk in with lesser fish. As a rule, those big crappies are almost solitary and will avoid mixing with lesser fish. If you know there are large crappies in the water and you’re catching smaller fish, move and change tactics because those chunks are a world apart from the smaller ones.

One of those 14″ers laid in the 5 gallon pail with water up about halfway and its nose was on one side the tail touching the other.

The other fish that were dressed out had the usual bug crap in the guts. I’m assuming that seeing the minnow bait was more than they’ve had their chops around for several months, hence the strong bite today.

I toyed with the idea of going back tomorrow but the weather and wind reports aren’t favorable.

Thanks for another awesome report, always filled with great knowledge.

Hunting24seven wrote:

Thanks for another awesome report, always filled with great knowledge.

Thank you.

Nice report-good to hear about open water.

Bearcat89 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>gim wrote:</div>

14 inch crappie is bigger than any <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>crappie I’ve ever caught.

And he acts like it’s no big deal. <m

Tom’s the <em class=”ido-tag-em”>crappie master for a reason.

the crappie whisperer!!!!!