drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 4/12/10, Hal

[FishNews]

<br /> Today was Hal's day out so we went crappie fishing. It started out sort of slowly for us as we ran downriver to try out a few places. We caught a few downriver and had what was probably a big drum break me off after about 2 minutes of pulling drag. No slime on the line, so it wasn't a catfish and it never came up, so that just about elimates a big bass. I still hated to break it off without seeing it. It was a heavy fish.<br /> We came back up to my favorite spawning cove, and we got on the fish. I had to quit at 1:00 to keep an appt this PM, and the fish were biting like crazy when Hal brought me to the ramp. He is fishing the hotspot right now as I type in this report. It will be interesting to see how many more fish that he catches. We landed 37 crappie with only 3 of these being short fish. Huge black males up to 13.5 inches and I also caught several females that were anywhere from being completely spawned out to about 1/2 spawned out from looking at them. We released all fish. Hal and I neither one need anymore crappie for a while. I will keep some spots in a few days.<br /> I caught all my fish on a pearl stinger that had a pink head and chartreuse tail light. Custom made of course. emoBig Hal was having pretty good luck with a Bobby Garland bleeding shad. All fished on 1/32 oz jigheads. Several bluegills, 1 rock bass, and 1 long distance release on a spotted bass completed our AM. The males were in less than 4' of water, and the females were in deeper water, but close to the beds. I would say about 8 feet deep.emoBig emoGeezer