Mora

Made it out again wensday night to chase some crappies around near mora. Water temps ranged from 56 to 60 degrees.
Fishing started out a little slow. No fish where found in the usually crappie spots. Did pick up a few pike and a dog fish.
After not finding fish in the usually spots we decided to look for new spots. After a while of checking a few other warm areas of the lake we did locate some nice crappies. Ended up with 6 between 11 and 12″ from one little area.
Sorry I wont give any more details on where these areas are or even what lake it was. The spots that I mention are not very large and would not take much to be over crowded. Here are a couple of things I do to locate these areas.
One well known key to finding these fish is spending a little time checking water temps. Warm areas of the lake do hold fish. If you dont have a temp gauge on the fish finder try using a thermometer(?) on a pole to check temps. Simple but will work.
Finding a warm area of the lake might not be to difficult. But once you find it now is the time to start moving around and finding those little spots in there that the crappies use. It might be a just one little area of weeds or a stump in a large warm water ares that holds fish. Once they are located I have found these areas can be productive year after year. Put together a number of different spots on a lake and you will end up with a nice milk run you can fish.
One technic I use for checking larger areas for crappies is trolling small baits useing the trolling motor. Some times it is just a hook and a split shot or two. Make some mental notes of where fish are caught. Then come back and check them over a little better.
Hope these tips help your crappies fishing.
On anouther note. Starting this year we have started being a little more selective on the size of fish we keep. 9″ to 11″ fish are what we try to keep. A few others are still kept to fill in for a full meal of fish. My thoughts on this are to limit the taking of smaller fish to let them get bigger. And limit the taking of the bigger ones to keep there healty genes reproducing. This practice is not based on one peice of data that this will help the crappie population. Guess I am just trying to protect a outdoor activity that I enjoy. Would be happy to hear any comments on this.
Good luck fishing.