When asked the question “where should we go Cade?” I had a hard time thinking of what to say 
The bite on pool 8 backwater has been tough-mediocre as of late for crappies, and I haven’t seen much gill action in the depths either. I threw around the idea of heading shallow for some gill action, but realized there weren’t as many options for fall back plans if the bite was hard. So we stuck to an area that I fish quite often, and decided to stick it out the entire day. I’m quite glad we did. with only 2 keeper crappies and a bunch of little ones with neither my dad, unlce, or younger cousin catching anything, I decided we better try something new rather than sitting in the same ditch for the day. So off we went on a good walk and set up. I caught a 10-1/2″ crappie right away so we sat there for a bit. Again, nobody else was catching much, so I searched a bit and found a good school of decent sized gills biting. It was enough action to keep my cousin very happy and interested throughought the day. With a dozen or so nice gills on the ice, I went back to work on the crappies, and found them going decently as well. Fishing a steep drop from 4 ft into 20 plus was the ticket to finding good, unpressured crappies in this area. The fish were suspended from 6-11 ft down, with the best bite coming up high- if you could reel your jig up before they disappeared with time, my dad and uncle managed to get into a few as well, and I helped my cousin catch his first flasher fish ever- a decent sized eating crappie. Overall I’d have to say it was a fun time had by all on the ice, and my uncle is looking forward to making the hour drive sometime again soon. All together we put together a limit of panfish for uncle Terry to take home, they’re headed for oil near Richland Center, WI
here are the pics- second pic is Evan and I with some 10-11″ crappies…
