02-23-2010, 10:00 AM
After having my offers turned down by a couple I finally got in touch with Catfish1 yesterday and made a plan to try to find some crappie today, emoScratch We got started around 1:30 and headed out into the river from Wolftever and a beautiful springlike day, emoCool We tried 3 or 4 places in deep water without any luck so decided to give Wolftever Creek a try. Lots of fishermen out today and all the community hot spots were occupied and some were catchin&#39; fish. We did see lots of baitfish in the creek so figured there were some crappie somewhere if we could just find &#39;em. We saw Polo getting his boat ready to go out and stopped by to chat with him and introduce him to Catfish1. Turned out they had mutual friends so we had a nice, long chat while watching all the boat traffic going up and down the creek. Polo told us of a couple places to try, saying that he had caught some fish at those places off and on so a big THANK YOU to Polo as his predictions were good and we began to catch a few crappie. I will have to say that most, all but 4, were throwbacks, but we ended up the day with a fair count of 24. Some of the throwbacks were as short as 5 inches and all were very pale in color so guess they have spent a lot of time very deep. Water temp was 43* in the river and as much as 53* in the Creek. Most of the crappie were caught on crystal shad &amp; hologram, some with a tail light and some plain. The count seemed to be around a 5 in water that was mostly 6-10 feet deep.<br />Catfish1 did hook a really nice bass and had a nice fight on his hands &#39;till the fish went under the boat and broke him off. Of course I got the blame for not getting the net in time but he had to endure several minutes of razzing for not having the drag set so as not to break the 4 lb line, emoPoke emoSmile <br />I will say that some of the fishermen out today had forgotten their boating manners. It is not cool to run by another boat while sitting at a dock, fishing, only 20 feet away and making 2 foot waves,emoAngry . Guys, you won&#39;t miss any fish if you just slow down when going by another boat when it&#39;s sitting still and broadside to you. 20 yards of idle won&#39;t make 2 minutes of difference in your arrival time to your fishing spot and I bet the same fish will still be there waiting on you, emoRolleyes <br />Hopefully we will get some warm weather and the catchin&#39; will get better. Looks like the rain is heading our way as the wind here on Signal Mtn. has picked up considerably in the last hour, emoRain