drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 5/29/10, Captain Hazmat

[FishNews]

I feel as proud as a new papa as one of my crappie students won the MCA crappie tx, barely nosing out Captain Hazmat and me. Less than 1 pound separated our 20 fish limits. None of the contestants could really get on any big fish. We only had a couple of 13" fish, but bunches of 11 and 12 inch fish. Same for Hal and Jim Ed who won the tx.<br /><br />Mike and I had a plan and pretty much stuck to it most of the day. We hit a dock that he fished last year to win the tx and caught only smaller fish. Then we went to a spot that I had found bigger fish on and we had our limit and was culling by 8:30 AM. With the pressure off, we then just fished different docks, drops, brush, etc looking for the bigger fish. I suppose that we caught 70 or more fish. BG shads in blue thunder, patriot, blue ghost, and a crystal shad that I had colored with a blue spike-it q-tip. We found most of the fish 15 to 20 feet deep and extremely shy. Bites were very difficult to detect.<br /><br />All in all, it was a fun tx and a good bbq dinner afterward. Good fellowship with all the guys and we even won prizes for our 2nd place finish. Mike and I each selected a rod. Mine was a combo 6' medium spinning with 8 ball bearing reel. I plan to make it a drop-shotting or shakey head bass rod. It might not get used much. emoBig <br /><br />Congratulations Hal and Catfish1. You both done good to coin a phrase by Fat Albert. There is always next year. We are taking the gloves off next year. emoBig emoGeezer <br /><br />NO pics, so this is just a fishing report. Too busy trying to catch big crappie to take pics of 12 and 13" fish.