drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 9/18/09, Hal

[FishNews]

Friday report time for Hal and me. Put boat in the water at 7:30. Ran short distance and had 40 crappie in the boat by 8:15. Then we started dock hopping the rest of the day except for one short time period while we fished a bluff. Did quite well on the bluff until TVA suddenly increased the flow rate and that stopped the fish. I mean, that moved the fish and we didn't take time to find them again. Went back to dock fishing for the rest of the day. Hal wouldn't let me quit until we caught 101 crappie. It took until 3:12 PM. <br /><br />The hot bait today was a panfish assassin with a tail light. Various colors worked well too. Pumpkinseed, albino shad, s/p shad, and crystal shad all worked in the panfish assassins. Later, I fianlly switched to BG shads and they worked pretty good, but not as good as the panfish assassins today. Go figure. emoScratch <br /><br />Most of the fish were on a 4 count today. Fish holding high up in the water column. We caught a few over shallow brush, but mostly under docks. New moon phase today and the fish were tearing it up. Hal is a believer about the moon phases now. Good strong movement around 7:30 this morning and then a semi-lull and the bite picked back up again just around noon. My fishing time watch showed both movements. After the noon bite, the fishing really slowed down and I didn't think that we were going to catch the last 6 or 7 fish. It was like pulling teeth to get them.<br /><br />In addition to the crappie, I caught 4 spots and 1 bluegill and Hal caught 1 shellcracker and 1 bluegill and had a big catfish on for 2 or 3 minutes. There I wuz, standing at the ready with trusty net in hand, when the little jig suddenly, without warning, just popped out of the fish's mouth. Hal said it was a bigun. emoBig emoGeezer<br /><br />PS All fish released today.