Found some hitters this morning….

Nice Crappies. Mississippi backwater, all on structure. 1/16 jig with a purple/chartreuse tail 2-1/4″ plastic, under a slip float. Light biters early on , but as the sun got over the horizon they picked up pretty good. Nothing monster but all in the 11 to 11-1/2″ size range. Good eating. Beautiful morning. Ice in the guides early but by 8:30 it warmed enough so that issue melted away.

Tomorrow morning is supposed to be a near mirror of this morning, so I’ll probably go again. I’ve been cooped up too long already and need to get outside more.

We stopped at another shore spot on the way home and took a few random casts and found smallies laying on the sunny shore. Caught 5 in the 16 to 18″ range, same bait and jig. Fun times.

Nice. I’m still waiting for my first open water outing of the year. Every time I had plans to get out mother nature got in the way. Was once again hoping to get out on Sunday. Current forecast is a little cooler, wet, and windy. Just my luck

Got out yesterday and caught about 75 nice ones, nothing huge though, maybe 13″??

Couple of notable observations… First, we caught probably 50 of our fish out of a single tree that had fallen in the water. They were very tight to the wood and a slip bobber presentation got them.

Second, a glow orange and chartreuse Baby Shad was the ticket on this day, noticeably outproducing the other colors we soaked. That seemed odd since the conditions were bright and sunny. We also tried a little hair jig under a bobber, and caught some fish, but they proved over and over that a baby shad was what they wanted.

I was out yesterday real early but the wind was wrong for where I was at and slop blew in making hooksets miserable. I brought home a few in the 12″ range. For me the purple/chartreuse tail has been a super good color.

Those shad style baits are doing good for me this spring. I made up some 2-1/2″ er’s the other day to see if larger crappies had a preference, but I didn’t see any indication of that.

Structure right now is going to be a huge factor. When I am on structure, especially vertical structure, I fish shallow then work my way down. Often times smaller fish are deeper and the larger ones higher up and if a guy is dragging all those struggling dinks up thru where the larger fish are hanging it’ll disturb them enough that they’ll shut off or move and a person may not even be aware that this has taken place.

Jimmy Jones wrote:

When I am on structure, especially vertical structure, I fish shallow then work my way down. Often times smaller fish are deeper and the larger ones higher up and if a guy is dragging all those struggling dinks up thru where the larger fish are hanging it’ll disturb them enough that they’ll shut off or move

Interesting observation and something to be aware of next time we’re fishing heavy cover.

Say Tom (Or anyone else with an interest), I’ve been thinking about casting crappie jigs with monofilament versus fluorocarbon in order to reduce the fall rate and hang my jig in their face a little better. Since monofilament floats and Fluorocarbon sinks it stands to reason that monofilament would hold the jig up a bit more due to its buoyancy. Have you experimented with mono vs. fluoro? Does it make any difference?

I won’t use fluoro on crappie rods as I fish floats a lot and there are issues between the two. I do have rods that carry Clam Frost braid for when I want to cast without a float or when I plan to vertical jig crappies.