I Got a call last week from my buddy, John, who lives on Lake Minnetonka that the crappies had moved into his bay, “and the sunfish are moving in, too!” So, Bruce, Ron & I did the only thing we could……we drove up to go fishing! It rained off & on all day. But, we were fishing under the Slip Canopies, so we were in good shape. Using pink, fire orange, & white ice fishing jigs, we started catching 10″-11″ crappies & were soon at our limit of great, eater-sized Specks!we did catch an occasional largemouth, looking for a snack!we switched our tactics to sunfish, and were soon catching a Gill on ice to see every cast. Unfortunately, we had located a school of 10,000 potato chip sized fish. We kept a couple of the nicer circling little rascals amongst the crowd, but we easily released them from our dock pail back to the lake to grow up to the 9″ to 11″ sunnies that we were looking for. By the time we were supposed to stop fishing & head into John’s apartment for a fish dinner, we had landed a couple of bass from 2 – 4 pounds, and seven pound sized Bullheads!
This has been an annual event for about six years, and we have never been disappointed. This year’s take was ten crappies each to take home for a meal, and enough BS that we could all be invited to BK’s family reunion! It was nice to see bigger crappies than we had seen in the past. Hopefully, this ‘larger fish’ trend will continue!