Pool 8 12-16-07

With a full day of chasing trophy bluegills under our belts, Justin and I decided to move deeper on Sunday and search for suspended slab crappies. A consistently tough bite produced doubts, but we wanted to give it a shot anyway. We strolled onto the ice around 6:15 and set up. We were hoping to get a few crappies snapping before light, but that just didn’t work out for us. The bite really didn’t start at all until around 7:30 AM. I was positioned perfectly over a large tree that we located last year, and when the bite turned on, it got pretty good. Although the bite was strong, Justin had some extra ambition on this day which I just couldn’t pull from inside of me. I think a lot of it had to do with lack of sleep and being really cold for some reason, keeping me in the shanty most of the day Justin did our homework for us, and located the tip of a small underwater point that I was telling him about. this point sticks into a running channel and is 10 feet on top and slopes off into 20 feet of water. Justin was catching numerous crappies in the 10 to 11″ range with one decent one coming in at 11-1/2″. during this time, I was still back on the tree slaying crappies ranging from 6-10″ but the gills were what I was really after. By the time I left the tree I had around a dozen nice gills in the 8″ range (all released), and it was off to do some more searching again. We set up on a wide point that isn’t so long and has a pretty immense shelf to it. We drilled around 20 holes and set up camp, but stayed out of the shack most of the time. we would give each hole about 2 minutes to do its thing, and if there wasn’t a fish showing up in that 4-10 foot range over 20 fow, we moved on. The holes were drilled in a circle and it made for a nice rotation. These crappies were moving FAST, so I recommend using heavy baits to get to them fast, because they are gone before you know it. Setting tip ups with a fathead could also be a very productive technique for these cruisers. All in all, we each caught some crappies, but Justin took home top honors today for both numbers of keeper crappies, and biggest. He must have iced a dozen nice crappies and many more small ones. Using a swedish pimple or forage minnow with no bait is substantial enough to get these fish to bite. All in all, a fun day on the ice. Pictured here is Justin with a nice 11-1/2″ crappie, and an average 8″ gill that I caught.