drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 10/08/10, alone

[FishNews]

I looked at my watch and saw that a major feeding period would peak at 12:20 today, so I decided to get out before the period started and fish for crappie. I went alone. I knew that a couple of guys that I have taught to crappie fish were fishing the Chick today down in my neck of the woods, so I decided to leave docks alone.<br /><br />I went first to a bluff where I had caught a few nice crappie and spots a few days ago and landed a bluegill on the first cast. A couple of cast later, I caught a nice spotted bass and shortly thereafter, I landed 2 more spots. It wasn't looking too good for the crappie there and I was about to leave when I caught a nice keeping crappie. A few more casts yielded nothing, and after looking at my watch, I knew that I needed to be on a structure for the peak of the feeding period.<br /><br />I made a 10 minute run and arrived at an offshore structure, dropped a marker buoy, and proceeded to catch several keeper crappie. I don't think that I had a single throwback today, other than the ones that I culled. I went to another vertical structure and caught 2 more crappie before finally deciding to try a couple of docks. I only caught 2 crappie on docks. But I fished one dock that I never fish and the other crappie came off a dock that I have only fished one time. Both were keeper crappie. My 15 keepers weighed 13 lb 13 oz which is almost 1/2 pound less on average from yesterday's catch at Tims Ford.<br /><br />I fished with both 1/24 oz jigheads and 1/32 oz jigheads today. On the 24's, I had a mo-glo ghost and on the 32's I had a ghastly minnow slab slayer. It was a crappie magnet today. I then tried an outlaw special and caught fish on it as well. I looked at some shallow water blowdowns, but they were covered with weeds, and I didn't want to fool with that mess.<br /><br />I bought a cheap rod to replace the one that I broke the other day. It was the cheapest rod that Walmart sells I think. It is a 5.0 UL Shakespere tubular glass rod, 2 piece (which I glued up to make it one piece), good looking guides on it, and sells for 9.87 at Wally World. But let me tell you. I just love the feel of this rod. It handles the big crappie just fine. I really enjoyed fishing with it today. You don't need a 200 dollar rod to catch crappie. emoBig emoGeezer <br />