drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 3/20/09, Hal

[FishNews]

Hal and went out this AM for 1/2 day of fishing. Hal had a party to go to this PM, so we quit a little bit after noon. Despite the very chilly, nw wind, we managed to catch 24 slab crappie. I added another TARP to my total (4 so far this year) that was 14.5 inches long. These fish are so strong right now. The fish seem to be scattered, no really big concentrations of these so far. It shouldn't be too long before they begin to do their spring fling, unless these cold nights turn them off. But this happens every spring. Just as soon as we think that things are going to be hot, the weatherman orders a few cold nights to screw everything up.<br /><br />Water temps had cooled from yesterday. It averaged 56 today vs the 62 degrees that we saw yesterday at the same time of day. More cool nights will only slow things down even more. The fish were in water under 10 feet deep and fished really slow. Because of the stiff wind, if I hadn't been looking at my line, I would have missed the tarp fish. I didn't see the line jump and the wind was howling at that particular time, but I noticed the line started easing off sideways and I set the hook. Biggest fish of the day.<br /><br />We fished a multitude of baits, colors, etc and the best lure was probably a bg shad, but I caught several on ringer stingers before going to the bg shad. They bit nearly every color that we tried. We lost 4 other slabs trying to lift them over the side of the boat instead of putting the net under them. We sure are dumb. Took us 4 lost fish to finally figure that out. emoBig Another thing, we didn't have a single throwback crappie today. All keepers and with my kids, grandkids, and great grandkids coming this Sunday for a fish fry, Hal let me keep all of the fish today. It doesn't look like we caught any females. emoGeezer<br /><br />Hal will add a couple of pics later after the party. emoParty emoBig