I spent some time at Chester Woods Friday evening to see if the crappies were making their move yet. Though unable to find any specks there was some decent luck with gills and bass while searching. To lure them in I stuck to plastic in the form of a mini-mite. The deepest a float was set was 4.5′ but less than 3′ was the only depth that yielded anything. Most fish came at 2′ or less under the float in very shallow water. There didn’t seem to be much for color preference. A couple of 9.5″ gills found the boat and I look forward to these big ones showing up in force soon. Open areas and wood both produced equally. When it started getting dark the gills started making a lot of commotion on the surface in the middle areas of the lake and a mini-mite 1′ under a float found it’s way into a few mouths which was kind of fun; they were easy targets anyway.
Saturday on the Zumbro was a different story. The first place I stopped at was one of my favorite fallen trees that has a LOT of branches for fish to hide in. Again, plastic was the only bait used and again the mighty mini-mite was the go-to. Starting out with a pink body/white head 5.5′ under a slip-float the specks showed themselves immediately. There were a few decent gills mixed in too. The lure body was beat up a little from Chester Woods the night before and when it couldn’t hold on to the hook shank anymore I switched to a chartruse body. The fishing picked up quite a bit after the color change and went pretty well until the clouds started getting heavier. At that point a little experimenting kept them coming. Between a pink mini-mite and a purple/electric blue culprit paddle tail I still managed a fish every ten minutes or so but the fishing was never as good as it was for the first couple hours. Using a culprit ice blue shad tassel tail got a few bites too but only produced one nice speck. I’m guessing the fish were only mouthing the tail because those things look really tasty. After finally losing confidence in the first spot I went to try a couple more submerged trees with only a few fish at each one. Then came the rain. When the rain started steadily falling the lake calmed way down. There were only a few people left on the lake so the wakes went away and the wind disappeared too. At this time I switched gears and fish were found in some very shallow water. Referring to 3-5′ of water the lure was 1.5-2′ under a float. All in all a couple of limits of 10-12″ specks made their way to the boat along with a couple of limits smaller than 10″ in eight hours of “work” on the water for me today. Thats better than the last couple of times when I went home more or less skunked.
A few of the specks are starting to get some dark color to them which would make me think they have been spending some time in shallow water getting beds ready. Seems a little cold for that but I’m sure there are some gals in there that are almost ready to get rid of the baggage they’re carrying and are telling the males to get ready too. I bet things are going to heat up quick if we get some warmer weather and before we know it the spawn will be over. The weather has been really goofy so I wonder how that will affect the spawn. If we don’t get some warmer temps within the next few weeks to warm the water enough how strong is the possibility of the females re-absorbing their spawn?
Chris