drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 3/15/10, hal

[FishNews]

It was just a little bit chilly and windy this morning, but Hal and I had a crappie trip planned and we have a good moon phase at the moment, so it was off to the lake. We ran up to the nuke area and stopped on an offshore structure and the very first cast, I caught a 15" smallie. Oh boy, off to a good start. An hour later after fishing that entire cove without another bite, we opted to run on upriver and fish docks. The first dock that we stopped at had crappie on it. We caught in the neighborhood of 40 crappie on it and then left to fish other places. <br /><br />On a different dock, Hal caught a chunky little spotted bass, but we couldn't find anymore crappie anywhere, so we went back to the original dock that we fished. The fish were still there so we fished there until they just quit biting. 61 crappie, 1 bluegill, 1 golden shiner off one single dock. Most of the fish were small though. We only kept 10 crappie between 11 and 12 inches long. We released all the others and many were in the 9 inch range.<br /><br />We were fishing 1/32 oz jigheads and various plastic bodies. For a long time, the only plastic that they would hit was a 1.5 inch sassy shad in glow color. We tried other colors in that body, but they would only hit the glow color. Then about mid-day, they quit hitting the glow color and went to a key lime pie color. Then I caught a bunch on a bone/chartreuse slab slayer. Hal caught them on the electric chicken color and I did catch one on an albino shad with a taillight.<br /><br />Water temp ranged from 47 to 49 degrees. Water stained a bit in the coves and in the main river channel, but just outside the main river channel, the water was as clear as it can be. 41,000 cfs flowrate and lake level of 677+. The wind was from the NW blowing steady at 11-13 mph with occasional gusts. We were bundled up and stayed warm. Labman is taking me tomorrow so I will get to see how good a guide he is. emoBig No pressure though, Norman. emoBig emoGeezer