Alexandria, Panfish Report 2-19-11

The panfishing in the Alexandria area over the past few weeks has been extremely productive and this weekend was no exception. I met up with a couple good friends Saturday, our goal was to take advantage of the beautiful day that was forecasted and of course get on some quality fish.

The first lake we hit is notorious for kicking out large crappie and sunfish. We started on one of the shallow sand flats in 12-14 FOW. The area was littered with sunfish. Even though they were on the small side, we did manage a good number of them in the 7”-8.5” range. As fun as these fish were, this wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, so on to the next lake we went.

The second lake we fished is noted for it’s mid day crappie bite, so after drilling a series of holes it was easy to see we were definitely on the fish. The Marcum read 2 to 4 feet of fish in every hole. We quickly put a number of crappie on the ice, but it was soon apparent we were in a massive school of juvenile fish ranging from 6”-9.5”. Again, as fun as this was, we only had a couple hours of daylight left, and wanted to find some nicer fish.

Our last lake of the day was a small lake my buddy had caught some decent fish on earlier in the year. I fired up the Solo and ripped a couple lines of holes ranging from 10-15FOW. We started out in the deeper holes and read quite a few fish. They would react to the bait but getting them to commit was another story. We kept on the move, working our way shallower until our lookers turned into bitters. Once we hit the 10-12 foot area it was game on. Not only were these fish active they were also very nice sized. We caught fish from 10” – 13”, with the average fish being 11”-12”.

Whenever I find crappie this aggressive, I love to switch to a mid sized jigging spoon. This does a number of things for me. First, it weeds out the smaller fish. Second, it allows me to get the lure down quicker. Third, I don’t have to mess with bait. Last, it dramatically reduces the number of missed fish.

Over the next couple hours we caught slab after slab. My spoon would barely be two feet under the ice and I’d see a couple red bars on the Marcum start to fly up from the bottom. All you had to do was close your bale and wait for the two lines to meet and it was fish on. I’ve had plenty of great days on the ice, but not too often is it quite this easy.

It sure is rewarding to hit the ice with some good friends and work hard to have it all come together in the end… it doesn’t get much better than that!