drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 7/13/10, Dr Phillip Gawthrop

[FishNews]

Phillip and I fished this morning for crappie from about 7:00 AM til 10:00 AM. Phil needed a few more fish for his upcoming fish fry, so we kept 14 of the 24 fish that we caught today. 10 fish failed to measure up to our 11" minimum limit. Dr Phillip had the hot hand this AM landing 2 TARP sized black crappie. 14.0 and 14.5. My two biggest ones measured 13.5 each. I think that we had about 4 or 5 that were over 13" and a few 12" fish to go along with some 11+ inchers.<br /><br />The hot lure today was a blue ice split tail on a 1/32 oz jig and the fish were deep. We were fishing vertical structure and docks. We landed some smaller crappie on bluffs and the bigger crappie came on counts from 15 to 25 in 25-35 feet of water. The river is full of bait fish right now. They were everywhere that we went and we saw huge schools on the depth finder as well as those that were on the surface. But we didn't see any schooling bass. I was ready for them, but they were a no-show today.<br /><br />This is the first time that I have been fishing in a week. My shoulder was hurting so bad this morning that the Doc had to adjust it while we were on the water. I hope that he don't charge me for a "boat" call. emoBig emoGeezer