crappie chronicles

[gophish]

thursday jan. 20 2005,

went back to a lake i had been to earlier. there had been a good dusk walleye bite there so i thought i'd try to catch that and see if i could find crappies.

sat up off a sunken island at the end of the drop in what was about 21 feet of water. there were fish down there. only pulled up a couple bluegills, i noticed only one or two fish come in high like crappies. got tired of not catching the crappers so we moved in shallower just to try something new. moved to 18 feet cloer to the hump and absolutely nothing. ended up abondoning fishing and spent ahalf hour just shooting through the ice mapping the spot and trying to find fish suspended....this was a good idea.

we ended up finding a spot that was 25 feet deep, the deepest we could find and it was the only place we found suspened fish. had to get home so didnt have time to drill and see if we could entice them. all last year ifished close to the humps, i thinki'm gonna have to try fiding them deep this time around.

confident that our jigs would have enticed them. white fatboy and then a redglow genz bug with waxie. plus two other glow jigs, not sure which ones that my roomate along was using.

tommorow i will try deep water on this lake or some lake..unless i try either of a certain walleye lake i've had in mind.

gophish.

[Deep_Sinker]

Quote:

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i guess what i might need is an aqua view to bring along then.

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Drop me a line...I have a rarely used Aqua View with the Mo-Pod for easy panning to get rid of for a really great price. boex0033 at d dot umn dot edu

Good luck this weekend!

[gophish]

sunday january 23,2005.

DL Forum get together on lake sallie. set up in a 20 foot hole in the midst of a large flat with average depth probably around eight feet. many different shacks fishing and the action was slow. i know an aqua view sighted some walleye but they produced no bites. and only one or two crappies were caught. i know i missed the hookset on one. i think we threw just about everything at them and i know there were some good fishermen along who should have been able to entice em had they not had lockjaw. oh well. it was stilll a good time.

gophish.

[ivegottabite]

yeah it was a good time, too bad the fish weren't biting. we did mark quite a few fish but nothing wanted to take anything. it was nice to put a few faces with names.

[Dano2]

I thought it was lake melissa, ya'all decided to go to sallie eh?

[gophish]

whoops, nope melissa it was.. thats my bad.

i'm gonna start changing things up now and veering from my normal routine. hopefully i can find crappies out in some deeper water.

also, looks like those articles on the FM homepage will be quite helpful.

gophish

[gophish]

friday, january 28, 2005.

today was a rough day on the ice so we wont really talk about it.

first. roads were shitty but we hadnt gone in a while and had nothing better to do.. so we went fishing.

second. got out there and had to pull some guy out of a snowdrift. that took lots of time. by the time we finally got to anywhere remotely good it was dark.

so we just drilled some holes and fished for a couple hours and called it quits.

nothing worth noting or learning from here other than that we probably should have just stayed home.

gophish.

[gophish]

and so to compromise a bad day the night before, today saturday january 29, i went to red lake for the day.

took me a while to get tehre cus of fog, ice, snowplows etc. but i was fishing just prior to 11.

nailed two crappies instantly and in the first three hours there had eight crappies and landed several nice walleyes.

i went with a thunder and lightning approach that seemed to really do the trick. used a frosty, or weasel? jigging spoon on one rod. in a basic glow. and would pound that on the bottom and lift it and lower it back down really slowly.

the other hole had a basic fatboy (glow) with a live minnow..this was crucial. it had to be lively down there. i always remove the tails so that they cant swim around as much but i needed to see my rod tip wiggling to know that the minnow was gonna work. when it went frantic, it was only a matter of time typically before there was a fish on tehre.

often times i would get them under the jigging spoon and then wiggle the deadline and have em hit it instantly.the last couple were very finicky and i had to keep that jigging spoon moving but very minimal motion, i'm talking about quivering it only about 1 cm for three four minutes before they'd suck it in.

crappies were about 5/5 as far as jigging versus dead line goes. walleyes were more favored to the jigging spoon.

i notioned to a couple people coming off the ice who gave the fishign a thumbs down. i think the key was that

a.)i went through the hassle of pulling my sled way away fromthe pack. got to the end of the road and started walking.

b)when it got slow i moved

c)i fished hard all day long and continually worked that jigging spoon..pound on bottom, lift and drop.. all day long

also, i think a day of 10 crappies a dozen walleys and zillion perch is good. perhaps they prefer 20, 50, 100 of em. who knows.

cant wait to have a fish fry now....

and then i cant wait to go back there.

gophish

[gophish]

sunday january 30, 2005

why not go for the hat trick and head out today as well. GF11's dad was going so i decided to join him and try to find the crappies on lake sallie like we had last year. i was determined to explore the deeper water and find them suspended. we fished the shack through the afternoon and i decided at about 6:30, if no crappis i'd go look for them. caught a nice walleye (first one able to keep.. of the few dozen we've caught this year, we've only caught two that werent too big or too small to keep, weird) right around dark on a jigging spoon and that was the only fish. i tried to explore the lake but the ice had a crust on it so i couldt shoot through. plan on going back there once more with a chisel or scrapper, something that will get that crappy stuff out our hair.

right now the house is set up between a finger and a hump. these come up to about 14 feet and the house in the middle is in 22.

i see there are several houses on the lake and i'm curious to know if anybody out there has been catching them. i'm guessing there deep, but who knows where.

let me know

its just weird that all last year we fished this spot. from mid january through march and they were there all year long, and now this year, not a single crappie has been caught in three trips to this location.

gophish.

[ivegottabite]

steve-

i'm heading up to red this weekend, care to join me? sounds like from other reports that getting away from the crowd is key. give me a ring if you are interested, i'd like to hear more about your trip anyway.

[Havin' Fun]

Sallie can be very unpredictable for crappies...however I have had luck locating them on very slow tappering edges relating to a shallow flat, but deeper on that edge say like 35-30 feet....and also up shallow near the weeds after dark.

[huntnfish]

I made it out to a little lake east of Waubun that I've been trying to get out to for a while. It turned out to be a very good trip. For the first time this winter the fish were where they were supposed to be. Ended up catching about 15 largemouths, 13 crappies (5 for the pan) and a bunch of sunfish. I was fishing in about 18-20 feet in between the shoreline and a shallow hump. The crappies moved in around 3:30 and stayed around until about 6:00. I don't think I have ever caught crappies that were as aggressive as these. I caught almost all on an 1/8 ounce go devil with a waxie. The 5 fish I kept had to be kept because the treble hook was inhaled and couldn't be removed without hurting the fish. The lake was tough traveling with all the snow, but nothing that a little shoveling couldn't take care of.

[gophish]

well friday i headed to the little stock pond mentioned earlier in my chronicles for a last minute effort to get out during the week.

nothing. forgot what the lake was like as far as max depth and stuff. set up too shallow i think. theres no structure in tehre so nothing important to note.

saturday i had a lot of studying to do and thus it was a perfect time to head out to my buddies sleeper shack and "get away from all the distractions."

fished hard until about nine and then just went with rattle reels. that spot is bizzarre, for all the (Contact US Regarding This Word) crappies we caught all yaer long there, we havent caught a single one ths year. only some occasional walleye action. Its set up on sallie on the west side between a sunken hump and an underwater point in the deepest point 21" between the two. i think they are in the deepest hole in the lake but had no luck marking suspended fish when i went out exploring that night. the weather changed on me a little bit while i was out there and that mya have had something to do with why i only mustered up two small walleyes. but hey...i got a lot of studying done.

i think i'm going to go back out there tonight and do the same thing.

oh yeah, i've changed my style a little bit. a glow colored jigging spoon, frosty or weasel are what i have, have been my go to lures. they are the ones that are always on the rod in my hand as opposed to the white (glow) fat boy i used to have a thing for.

please let me know if you have a sleeper house that i can keep an eye on for a night while i'm studying. my buddies dad loves me going out there to help find out if there are any fish tehre.

gophish.

[scootsa]

Which house are you fishing out of. Sounds like we may be fairly close to each other. I haven't been having much luck on Sallie this year either, but it was late in the season last year when they moved into that area.

[gophish]

their shack is i think creme in color with a black stripe down it. its the kind you just crank up at the wheels. went out there again last night and caught three walleys, nothing big at all, barely worth mentioning.

i scanned that entire flat out there and didnt mark any fish suspended.

scootsa. if you ever want somebody to help you explore that lake let me know. there is me and then my buddy and his dad and friend who would all be willing to help try and find the crappies on that lake before the year is over.

reply back with any other info you have on the lake.

gophish

[scootsa]

I know the house you're talking about and it is right by me. I do have a few spots I've been meaning to try, but haven't had the opportunity to yet. I'm down there almost every weekend. We have a cabin on Sallie. I don't know if I will make it out on the lake this weekend or not. If I do it would probably be on Sunday. Let me know the next weekend you will be on the lake and we could do some exploring.

[gophish]

scootsa,

sounds good idont think it will be til after walleye season is over because this weekend i'm meeting my dad in mil lacs and the following weekend i'm doing the whole LOTW and URL thing with my roomate and staying at his cabin in warroad.

i've talked to another FMer and he and I may hit it during the week though. i think i'm going to try the deepest part right in the middle of the lake near where it gets to be about fifty some feet deep. also there is a spot on the far side of the lake that has a 35 foot hole right adjacent to a shallow shoreline point. they are my next two spots to explore. i walked all aroudn by our shacks and didnt see any suspended fish and have only been catching tiny walleyes. we have caught one that was 17" the rest under 12"

keep in touch

gophish.

[gophish]

anybody up for a trip to red lake this weekend?

[ivegottabite]

gophish-

give me a call, i might be able to go up there.

[scootsa]

gophish-I am making my first trip up this weekend. Have any advice on where to go.