Just thought I would let all the river fisherman know about my crappie icefishing year on Pool 13. All in all it was good other than a late ice. As usual the vexilar was the most important tool I could use, in my opinion it far better than a camera, I can drill and look in a hole then move on, once I see my fish I will catch them, I move fast and a camera is to slow and not for me plus the river is many times to dirty. I tell everyone that asks how i catch my fish or where I catch them that location is very important some days I drill 50 holes, bait not so much as long as you are on fish, I fished all year with the same two baits a tungsten jig and #1 rembrant and never changed colors, sometimes a plain hook and minnow. People get way to caught up with color. This was the first year in a long time that I caught a 16″ white and black crappie in the same year. I caught a lot of 14-15″ fish as well. Some days I had 70 fish by noon. Some days I fished hard for 10 keeper fish, but those 10 fish had more meat than 30 bluegills. Respecting the size these fish can get I keep nothing smaller than 10″. The last two years has been great for pearch as well, I do not target pearch but catch a lot fishing for crappie, some pearch hit the 16″ mark as well, I think the fact that I use the big #1 rembrants has a lot to do with catching bigger fish. As far as bluegills go I kept only one all year, not to step on toes but bluegill do not trip my trigger, big river bluegill are hard to find and I am not into keeping 7″ fish. If I can get into gills bigger than 9″ I will hunker down and fish them but this almost never happens since I use bigger baits. Well its time to switch gears and fish walleye on the big river, hope your crappie year was good.
February 23, 2012 at 1:40 am
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