La Crosse Area Plastics and Pan Fish

There are some nice pan fish being fooled into making a snack out of plastics, it sure made for a fun trip using ultra light tackle today.
AmWatson and I greeted each other early in the am (dark ) to an air temp of 71 degrees and a good South wind. The plan was to go find some wood in an out of the way area while looking for crappies. The first stump was only in 2.5fow and we had action immediately. There were small crappies around keeping us busy but, some bull gills were making for a good tussle, who were we to pass up on the opportunity too….run with the bulls

Mini Mites being twitch past a piece of wood under a bobber was too much for 7-9.5 inch gills to pass up, they kept us hoppin’ from stump to stump. You would take a few nice fish then some smaller ones, this is when we moved on to the next spot. We also learned in a hurry 3.5-5fow was the place to be. The surface temp was 72 degrees and the wind had a chop on the surface reflecting the sun and keeping the fish from ever going deep, all day long.

After beating stumps down to twigs, and still catching some crappies out from the brush we changed gears. We went deeper thinking there had to be some bigger crappies around, nope, not to be. Like I mentioned above, shallow was the key. With knowing the fish were shallow and wanting to still try something different, a trip was made to a big flat and we set up to drift across it. We were back on crappies and having fun again. It was a good call on the location but, we never hit the slabs. There were easily a hundred crappies between the two of us boat side today. Everything was caught and released. I did however mentioned just keeping 10 once or twice

AmWatson stayed with the Mini Mite producing fish after fish. I made a move to a minnow and jig hoping for something larger but it was not to be. The Mini Mite was the ticket for producing hits. Any combination of Pink/Chartreuse/White worked for me, Mike was having his best bite on a Smoked colored Mini Mite. Mike is pictured here with an average crappie caught today. Keep in mind while viewing Mike’s pictures…he is a little bigger than 5’11” Still not being the 14 inchers we were looking for but know are around in the area

Today made for fun after spending the last 2 outings fishing wing dams and the dam itself constantly battling grass, it was relaxing!
I had fun buddy Wats