Hey everyone I will be fishing a small private 100 acre lake in central MN over the weekend that apparently has had big crappies taken out of it during the summer. The lake is a shallow lake with 6-8 foot clarity during the winter and the deepest spot being 20 feet near the middle of the lake. Does anyone have any ideas as to what lures or jigs might be successful for big crappies?
Feedback would be appreciated!
My go to options are a couple styles of small wedge plastics on horizontal jigs. The same jigs with waxies. Small fat head minnows dead sticking, and lastly, some small jigging spoons. Fish will tell you want works, and it can often change during the day.
Ill give it a try I’ve never fished it before, any favorite overall plastics?
Since the big crappies were taken out, you sure there are any left? It doesn’t take much on a 100 acre lake.
Do you know if the lake had a winter kill 5-10 years previously?
I guess this summer there were some crappies up to 15 inches taken out of it. I’m not sure if there was a winter kill in the last 5-10 years. There use to be nice pike in the lake but they were thinned out, and that might be why the crappies started to come back.
I was just curious because I fish a lake that was reclaimed. Just like Red, there was about 2 years where monster crappies were being caught, but then things settled down.
Its always good to let the monsters go back, the nice things about small private lakes is that they dont get fished as much and can hide some big panfish.
The boom or actually the after boom I think had little to do with fishing pressure. I think it had more to do with a perfect storm when a lake is reclaimed and is settling into its eco balance.
SMall rattle spoons to call the fish in and after that I would look at pug bug jigs with some small plastics, good luck. – QB
We found a lot of crappies, a couple of eater bluegills ,and a few pike. This 14 incher is the nicest one we found! we were set up in about 17 feet of water fishing in the middle of the day about 3-6 feet off the bottom. We had most of our luck fishing with the tungsten heavy metal jigs, forage minnow spoons and crappie minnows on a dead stick. Gotta love those small lakes that no one fishes!
Nice fish Glock!
Glad you found some in there. With 17′ deep, hopefully they should be pretty safe from winterkill.
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