Ghost town

I drove by the Bayport pool on my way up to Brother Bait and decided to check out the ice scene from the park. Man what a ghost town! If you are looking for solitude it is there – Casper style. HOWEVER I didn’t see the ice from any landing. Does anyone know how the Minny and Wisconny side landings area?
If I wasn’t trying to catch sippi eyes I’d try to grap some slabs!
Turk

Tell me about it. There have been very few people out there and I can’t blame them, neither have I, but my boat/fishing equipment is looking look pretty good. I’ve given it alot of attention lately. The WI side landing isn’t perfect, but I saw one truck using it the other day. However, I’m done driving the Croix for this year. I’ve heard of a few vehicles going through on a St. Croix county lake I drove on quite often this winter. And very close to my buddies permanent. What part of the sippi have you been hitting? I’m headed to pool 4 weather permitting on Friday morning.

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Lindy

Lindy,

Yes, It is that time of year when you need to think twice about drving on the ice -splash-. Which is likey the reason its quiet out there.
I’ve been at Pool 4, it is hard to beat! Good luck friday.
Keep catchin’
Turk

hey turk…… as of late last week i’ve actually done pretty good on the slabs…… too bad it took most the winter for the nice ones to start showing up though. had my shack up at the power line most of january and february and caught a pile of potatoe chips…. i bet i caught around 75-100 6-8″ers. really wierd year i guess. anyone know how fast crappies grow in the river? cuz in a couple years its gonna get interesting again. anyway the last few times ive been on the bayport pool ive caught some really nice slabs. dont give up yet
kklund

The ice fishing for crappies use to be so good in Bayport. The word got out and things changed. Keep just enough fish for a nice dinner and release the remainder. Keeping a limit to bolster one’s own ego is no longer a necessity.

I agree with Grouse. Too many people are going out and catching them every day. Especially after they find them.
I went twice this weekend. Skunked Sat but found them Sun. I only kept 12 to have dinner for my wife and I. Turns out 6 would have been enough. I’m used to cleaning and eating around 20 small blue gills at a sitting so the slabs really threw me with the size of fillets. I’ll be eating crappie for lunch again today to use it up. I’ll probably try for some more next weekend. Keep a few if I find them and clean them up for a friend.

I went down on saturday and for the most part was all alone. You could olny count about a dozen others in sight. Ended up keeping 2 crappies 10″&11.5″ let one smaller one go and the normal batch of mooneyes. All the crappies were up about 6-10 feet off the bottom. One of them followed my jig up about another 10 feet before it hit.
The suspended marks about 10 feet down from the ice all were mooneyes.

There were alot of lookers off the bottom but who know what they were.

So that’s what those marks were 10 feet down. Thanks.

im not sure i can agree that the crappies are “fished out” on the river. if thats what your saying? it kinda runs in cycles. i didnt keep any this winter, can never seem to get more than maybe a half dozen keepers. couple weeks ago me and a buddy caught ten nice ones. what i was saying is that there is a huge year class coming up, and that we can expect it to get good again in a couple years.
kklund

Suzuki,
Were any of your crappies whites or were they all blacks?
I am sure two of the ones we got were white crappies. I olny cought one before about 2 years ago that was a monster
in the afton are but never got one in bayport before.