First ice off Crappie

With the wind creating loop in the line between the rod and float a slip is counter-productive. With a mini stealth set up as a slider the wind can literally pull line up thru the float stem and really slow down the drop and/or shorten the cast considerably. As a set float at 8′ there’s about a 5 second drop using a 1/32 and a 1.5″ bait and if wind is an issue I’ll drop the rod tip down into the water to help avoid the looping. I do not like slip floats at all so I either tough out the wind or fish another day. I’m retired so I can be choosy, lol.

I like the idea of a slip float but rarely use them and have had poor luck when I have. Got a mini stealth yesterday-found some fish pretty shallow yesterday.

Tim,

I found a few of these on Monday morning. After Sunday nights fireworks and wind/rain I didn’t expect to see many and I didn’t and everything I got came from down deep. I worked some 4-5 foot shoreline water and found zip.

The one in the picture was right at 13″ and two others very close in size all came from a breakline dropping from about 8 feet into 12. The three were fished at 7 feet under the mini, 1/32 head with a 1 1/2″ minnow type plastic. The fish favored the top edge of the break and all of them rose up to hit the plastic.

The other picture shows some of what I have been using to get fish of late. The bait colors shown have been a good color spread for the weather we’ve seen. The purple/chartreuse has been best on cloudier days. The minnow bait and the paddletails are getting the mot fish right now but the stingers will liven up in another couple weeks. The two ringed bodied paddletails are 2″ baits, all others1 1/2″. The two jigs are both 1/32 ounce. The one with the keep wire I use with the stingers and a couple of the paddletails. The bare hook on the other head gets the other baits.

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I took the boys (three and eight years old) out today and found the crappies in 8′ to 10′ of water directly off of vertical structure. Floats set at 3′ & 4′ and swimming a 1/32 jig worked. Light lift bites today. No water temp and we released them so I don’t know what they were eating.
Good advice on the floats, thanks.

This was a great color yesterday, especially when the sun peeked out a little. Its called chameleon and when the bait is put in the water it rapidly changes from the pinkish color seen here to a thin transparent brown as the bait descends. This color got my largest fish yesterday.

As for the fish, with the cold front having passed thru and high barometer we had along with an east wind the fish were hanging at about 7 feet over the deeper water. Lots of upward hits. Water temp took a hit overnight going from 51 degrees on Tuesday down to 48 yesterday.

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Nice crappie Tom looks like that one came from clear water-keep the posts coming I can’t even get out this week and stuff is hanging fast.

I was out again this morning for a short while and did ok. The fish were higher up in the column today….6 feet maybe. Most of what I caught were nice crappies in the 11-12 inch range, all blacks. White bass have been frequent on this and the trip before with a couple of them reaching into the two pound range. Fun but not a keeper for me.