The weather wasn't to bad today. Kind of nice to finally get a half way decent day.
Early morning temperatures started out a little chilly and the wind blew fairly hard from the northeast for about and hour before settling down to a very fishable, breezy day.
Surface water temps were running right around 64-65 degrees in most of the places we fished.
Most of our crappie came from water 8' deep or less today and a few came out of water less than 3' deep. Minnows were far and away the best bait for us today. About the only thing we caught on the waxworms was some nice bluegills.
The day started out pretty good. The guys put a couple of pretty nice crappies in the boat at the very first spot we stopped at. After the early morning hours had passed though, things got a little tougher. We hit several more spots and caught only a few more crappies along the way. The biggest of the morning ran 14-1/2" long.
Around noon or so, we shifted gears and started trolling night crawlers and large fathead minnows behind bottom bouncers for walleyes. That went pretty slow for the first hour or so also with only a few sheapshead showing up on the fathead lines. Usually the sheepies like the crawlers but they never touched them today.
We finally started to connect with a few walleyes and saugers at the third spot we stopped to check. Most were smaller than 15" but they did catch one that measured up at 17 inches.
At about 3:30pm, we switched back over to crappie fishing and that went slow at first also until we noticed another fisherman skirting the shoreline & casting into some very shallow water. They caught several small bass along the way and one pretty nice crappie. When they decided to leave, we pulled up and moved right up into that very shallow water. The guys set bobbers about 1-1/2' above the minnow and cast right up into the shallow water. It didn't take long before Gary's bobber went down. Several more fish came in from that shallow water including one crappie that measured up at 15-1/4" long which Gary is planning on having mounted.
Nice fish Gary and congratulations on your biggest crappie to date.
Last fall Chuck caught his biggest crappie ever and now this spring his fishing buddy Gary caught his biggest from the same lake! I'm betting these guys are gonna come back and fish here more often in the future.
It was fun to spend the day fishing with the two of you Chuck & Gary! Take care and hopefully, we'll see you again this year.
Boog
