Pool 7 Panfish Report 07.21.12

I sat down to type up this report and thought to myself, “Someday I’ll make a Bass report.” Well today isn’t that day, and this isn’t a Bass report…LOL! It’s been a while since I’ve put up a Bass report. They used to be my bread & butter. The Bass fishing is pretty good, but just not really good enough to tear me away from the outstanding Bluegill & Crappie bite taking place right now.

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably already saw the pics from my Rainy Day album. If not, then you can view a majority of them in this report.

My Dad and I started the day out Saturday at 6am. Before we hit the water I took a quick glimpse of the radar and determined it would be a coin flip of chance that we’d get wet from some much needed rain.

Rewind to last weekend, my Dad and I hit the water early last Saturday with a couple dozen leeches and crawlers hoping to find some active Walleyes or Saugers. We had designs of catching them on Draggin Jigs. I’ve been wanting some Walleyes for dinner for a while now and I just haven’t been able to put something together to make that dream a reality.

What we found instead was an active pod of Crappies that found our crawler tipped Draggin Jigs to much to resist. I wish I could say that’s the first time I’ve found Crappies on Draggin Jigs, but it’s not. There’s been a few times when I’ve located active Crappies on those jigs.

After failing to find some active Walleyes we ran back to that spot where we found the Crappies and we were able to put 10 nice sized Crappies in the boat.

Fast forward one week and we found ourselves back at that same Crappie spot. This time however the bite wasn’t what we were hoping for. Not sure if it was the weather(rainy), the falling water stage or whatever it was, but those Crappies were definitely aloof.

We caught a couple small ones, but they were few and far between. The one thing I know about Crappies is if they aren’t active and you don’t have something going right off the bat, move on and try again later. So we packed up and ran across the slough to one of my favorite snags.

Immediately we were on fish, but just not the Crappies were looking for. Instead we found a school of nice Bluegills of which, most were in that 8″ plus range. Those Bluegills were hot on my Froggie pattern Diamond Jig, rigged with a 1″ Gulp! Alive minnow in Black Shad.

That combination out-produced the live bait my Dad was using by at least 3-1. They were pounding that combo actively, and sometimes the bobber wouldn’t even sit straight up and it was headed underwater. You know you’re on a good pattern when the lure you’re using is deep into the throat of a scrappy Bluegill.

It didn’t matter what depth we tried or what area we were in, that pattern was it. The water depth we fished varied from some snags being in 7ft or water to others in 3ft. All I had to do was set the bobber stop accordingly and it was game on!

After an awesome breakfast at Hungry Point in Trempealeau, we tried a number of other snags that have been good to us in the past, but most produced Bluegills if anything at all. Then the heavier rains rolled in and dampened our spirits so we packed it in for the first part of the day. In all we brought home 16 Bluegills for fish tacos. All but 2 eclipsed the 8″ mark on the bump board.

Later that day, after the rains had died off the clouds broke up, I hooked up the boat for a quick trip with my Daughter Mattison. I wanted to see if the blue skies had the Crappies out sunning themselves. It didn’t take long for Matti to put and nice Crappie in the boat, using the same setup that I’d used earlier in the day. An hour on one snag kept us entertained with nice Crappies and a couple bonus Bluegills.

With a little luck and some better fishing, my next report will be back to the basics, a Bass report. Maybe…LOL!