Labman, Chickamauga, Crappie, 10/22/09, solo

[FishNews]

Got on the lake about 2:30 after a morning of errands, and lawn mowing. It was pretty windy out on the river channel. 1st dock i fished no crappie, next 1 nice crappie about 12" and couple of small bass, next dock nothing again. Tried the bluffs, no crappie, 1 med bass. Hit another dock 1 crappie 10". Man it was slow. <br /><br />Tried a different bluff, 1 hit I missed that felt like a crappie bite, but nothing hooked up. What is going on. Tried deep,mid,shallow, no action at all. About 5:30 decided to head in and try a dock I had tried earlier. This time the wind was blowing pretty strong into the side of the dock I was fishing. Had to stay on the trolling motor all the time to keep boat halfway in position. Had about 12' of water under this dock, and I switched to my new favorite color BG shad, it is called patriot and is blue,red,silver flecks on clear body. It worked pretty good yesterday and I really got it going on this dock too.<br /><br /> After shooting under the dock, the wind would bow the line and drift the jig sideways; when it hit a piling and bounced off a crappie would take it. Very interesting. I caught 8 really nice fish from about 11" to a measured 13 1/2" in about 20 minutes. They seemed to fight very hard, perhaps the current was helping them. I don't know what turned them on, perhaps the water blowing baitfish into the dock. I usually say that color doesn't really matter, but they ate up my red,blue,silver BG shad so who knows. These fish were sucking it in at about 4-5' deep. Don't know if they were suspended or coming up from deeper. The bite was pretty subtle, no hard hit at all.<br /><br />I ended up with 10 keeper crappie, 3 bass, and 3 gills. All fish returned to the lake to fight another day. I really had fun on that last dock, but was wore out trying to fish and hold the boat in the wind. Not every day is easy, but this time keeping at it paid off in the end.<br /><br />Regards, Norman