I faced a tough choice this past weekend. Either start fishing for walleyes or continue chasing panfish. Being that a severe cold front rolled thru on Thursday, I wasn’t sure anything would bite but either way, I knew I was going fishing. It was just a simple matter of what for.
The final factor ended up being the wind. As it turned out, I had more spots in my milk run for crappies that were out of the wind than I did for my walleye spots.
As it turned out, I fished both Saturday & Sunday afternoon. There wasn’t much sun on Saturday, but it was still quite a bit warmer in the afternoon than the morning.
Saturday was a chance to catch up on old times with a couple of coworkers from the company that hired me right out of college. Ross & Kim both worked there back in the 80’s when I first started and both of them are still with the same company so it was fun to catch up with how things were going there.
Neither Ross or Kim get many opportunities to chase fish from a boat so getting them on keeper size fish and sending them home with a meal was my main objective. Thankfully, the fish were still willing to play despite the cold conditions on the lake.
On Saturday, a plain minnow got bit here and there, but it definitely would not have been a good day had we only fished with minnows. By far, the fish preferred a tiny jig & plastic tipped with a wax worm. Even better was the wide range of other species mixed in with crappies. We pretty much had steady action all afternoon on crappies, small smallies, white bass, bluegills, sheapshead and even the occasional small walleye & sauger. We only kept 10 crappies and 2 bluegills even though we could have kept plenty more.
Sunday I took out another old friend who is recovering from his third hernia surgery and hadn’t been out fishing yet since having the surgery. That was 5 weeks prior and he had the bug pretty bad.
Knowing the crappies hadn’t yet pulled out to deep water, I once again targeted them first but reserved the last hour of the afternoon for walleyes & saugers.
The panfish cooperated beautifully once again and we each took home 10 nice crappies along with 2 perch and 2 bluegills. A bunch of panfish both big & small went back in the lake.
One big difference on Sunday vs Saturday was the minnow bite. On Sunday, a plain minnow rigged worked better than the jig & plastic tipped with a waxworm. Both rigs caught fish though.
We ended the afternoon chasing walleyes at two different spots on the way back to the boat landing and found this nice 17-1/2" sauger more than willing to hammer my B’Fish’N Tackle blade bait.
I also caught several shorts using the 2.45" Peanut Butter & Jelly colored paddletail. I figured with the cold front conditions, the smaller paddletail would be a good choice.
Now I wish we would have switched over to walleyes earlier. It did seem like the walleyes and saugers were more than willing to eat, we just didn’t have enough time left in the day to explore that bite further.
Guess I’ll have to tackle that bite next week!
If your looking for techniques used to catch the panfish, I suggest you take a look at my last report. (link below) The techniques we used this past weekend were exactly the same as in that report.
Way to go, Joel!
Great lookin’ Specks!
Great report Joel! I’m sure your buddy didn’t mind if they were crappies or eyes as long as that rod was bending. 5 weeks of down time sure is tough.
Nice to hear about a consistent pattern working for a change this year Joel – regardless of the species. Since mid-July, it has been pretty much starting over from scratch every time out. Love the “keep it simple” rigging from the September report too. Nice job.
Good job Joel
Well done Joel.
Nice job Joel. The duck hunting has been too good to pass up for me as of late. Too many activities to pick from in the fall. Good to see you having success as usual.
Very nice job ,Joel