St. Croix Crappies

Saturday the plan was to meet up with the boys early in the morning, setup and jig a sand break that has been giving up a few walleyes and saugers during low light conditions, then run north to check out a spot that had given up some crappies earlier in the fall. With trucks loaded with shacks and trailers full of wheelers, we were ready for our day on the ice.

The early morning eye bite didn’t produce any fish for the group, so around 8 am we loaded up the wheelers and made our way north. The spot that we were targeting was a shallow sand break that turns to rock and dumps into 40 + feet of water. Once we arrived the augers got a workout, and holes were punched from as shallow as 18 feet out to the 40 foot contour up and down the shoreline and off of the sand break.

It didn’t take long and some action was to be had. Seth must have been fishing with tube jigs early on, he iced a pair of nice smallies, pictured is the larger of the two, a 19 + inch fish that did not want to come up and see us, this fish fought, and fought hard! Once this fish was in the hole, I tried to grab it multiple times, but ended up with a wet arm and no fish! The fish came unbuttoned, but apparently wanted to see what was going on up top, because the fish swam right back up the hole, and Seth was able to wrangle it in for a picture and release.

The group was catching a crappie here and one there, hole hopping was a must until we found the general location. The action wasn’t fast and furious by any means, but the time was worth the quality of the fish that were caught. There were several techniques used, Bob had the best luck using a jigging spoon tipped with a minnow head, for others it was a custom jigs and spins ratso tipped with a wax worm, for me the larger fish came on a dead stick with a crappie minnow.

In the morning we had temps around 27 degrees, around noon, we got a nice coating of light snow; the winds picked up and up went the shacks. And we had our own mini white out on the river. I was glad to be sitting in the otter with the nice heavy double sided canvas when the wind was whipping down the river.

Around 4 o’clock we packed up and headed back to the spot where we started in the morning. Seth had the hot stick again, landing a real nice sauger and a walleye on jigging raps with a minnow head. We were off of the ice at 6:30, with the temp reading -2 on the truck, with the wind whipping.

What a great way to spend the day! Never more than 15 minutes from home, hanging out with the fellas and even having some success with the fish! See you on the water

Jami