Surprise bite

Made it up to the cabin this weekend for the first time in over a month. The neighbor was calling me daily to brag about how good the Walleye bite was. We had 3 guys in a 14′ Lund, 2 of them weighing in at roughly 250lbs each . Not much space & the 50mph winds didn’t help – yes, we got wet! Pulled in a couple of Eyes 18″ & 21″ and some Bass & Northern Friday. Not bad considering the elements. Geared up again Saturday morning and had nearly identical results.
After some long overdue maintenance, we were ready to hit it again around 5pm. We were drifting jigs in about 22′ near a 17′ flat. The light wind was perfect for drifting this known Walleye hot spot. We were on the water for about 15 minutes when we started feeling these very light “taps” but we could not hook into them. I told the guys it was more than likely perch – nothing was showing on the electronics. Jonsey said something just “thumped it”. He gave her a jerk and continued to pull in a 24″ Eye. GAME ON! I replaced my Shiner with a Gulp Alive leech & pitched her out. It was still dropping when the line went slack. I tightened it up a bit & set the hook. FISH ON! Started pulling her toward the boat & my brother yells out ” It’s a HUGE frickin Rocky”. Got her next to the boat & realized it was no rocky but a Crappie! I never use a net, so I gently reached down & pulled her out of the water. She was a beast. A 15 1/2 inch beast! We spent the next hour to hour & a half catching Crappie after Crappie, none under 11″. Nearly every cast we caught a fish! Color, presentation, bait – none of it mattered, they just bit. On numerious occasions, we would all 3 have a fish on at the same time. We ended up keeping 10 Crappie & 2 eyes. The stringer weighed in at 27lbs! That was about the most fun I’ve every had on the water(without the wife of course).
I can’t wait to get back up there. I’ll try to get the pics off my phone & to the screen soon.

I had the same thing happen a few years back. The difference is we got into a bunch of gills! We caught close to 30, and the smallest being 9 1/2! with one legitimate 10inch bull all on crawler harnesses.

It’s great when things turn out like that. we had a very similar day today though we could not get one walleye today. We tried everything just a dead see from 2pm till 7pm except for some dink perch and a nice 19inch smally. We thought with the full moon we would try our luck in a favorite spot that sometimes pays of big but not knowing what species would show up, sometimes walleye are there others times channel cats then sometimes big crappie. Well tonight it was the big crappie, after about 2 hours of nothing casting raps looking for walleye then at 9pm the bite was on for 2 hours then they shut down. Most averaging 13to15 inch at first we caught them on raps then switched to light bobber, do not know how many we through back maybe around 40. We kept 5 a piece, that size is plenty for dinner we figured. Still trying to wind down after getting home at midnight.