polo-dog, Chickamauga, Crappie, 2/20/10, A. DeFelice

[FishNews]

Andy wanted to learn to catch crappie as he didn't learn much yesterday and so when he got back from his meetings at the Church we set out to catch some. Before we left the dock he had already learned how to catch them and had 4 or 5 from a nearby brushpile. We went to some places in WT to see what was happening and the fish were no longer in the winter pattern in the creek. We saw reliable and his son Addison, and loc doc and his son and everyone seemed to be having trouble finding good bunches of fish. The water temp in the creek was up to 48-49 and on the main lake it was 45. We caught fish at all but one spot but they were few and far between and not very big. The biggest bunch that we got were on a brushpile at a 5 count. We did catch some on some deeper brush next to the channel farther out on the creek. We also went out to a main lake bluff and it was fishable with the flow that was I think around 60k CFS. We didn't try deep offshore structure and that might have been the place to try but there didn't seem to be big numbers on the spots we went over with the depthfinder. I would expect that with the warming water that the fish are headed towards shallow water and that the spider rig guys could have done well yesterday but I might be wrong. It seems that every year there is a short time when the fish are transitioning from winter to a prespawn pattern and they are hard to find consistently. It may take some moving around trying different things but I would expect that it's doable. I did see a huge number of suspended baitfish over an outside bend in a creek channel where I have never seen them before and I would expect that spider rigging in that area could have been good. They were suspended at about 7-10 feet over 21 or so feet of water. It can be frustrating fishing this time of the year but that's why they call it fishing and not catching. <br /><br />We ended up with about 15 fish with a couple of keepers fishing from 2:30 to 4:30. Andy is a dear friend and a missionary. We went on a misson trip to Chile where he was a missionary for over 10 years and he is an avid fisherman. I hope to get him out on the lake more in the future. It was great for him to be able to spend some time here for a few days as in Minnesota where he lives the ice is still thick.<br /><br />