Daily routine: Paydirt

Dinner

Finally my brother and I were able to locate a hungry school of crappie. We k had been fishing a couple of the local ponds for them with only one landed all year. The river had been high and I was thinking that the pond fish would be warmer and little ahead of the river fish. The rivers finally made it to a fish able level still a little high and dirty but not bad. We had some minnows we caught and a small tackle box laced with a couple of different colored jigs and heads.




 The first spot we fished was where the mouth of a small creek entered the river there was some small brush but no substantial visible structure.  It seemed like a good spot judging by how worn the bank was and how many old corks were in the overhanging trees. After 20  minutes with no takedowns on live minnows I knew it was time to go on the hunt and find them.  We walked down the bank a little further and found a good lay down I dropped the same minnow I had been fishing with the whole time and almost immediately caught a small bass. The next couple casts yielded a couple more bass and a bluegill. The minnows were automatic for the first time this year it seems the fish had fully emerged from the winter and are making up for the missed meals. Collin moved to a log that was laying parallel to the bank and he was able to land the first crappie. After landing he landed the  first we began to blanket the general area to find the bounds of the school they seemed to be really tight to the structure almost directly under it. We worked the school pretty hard and caught a mixed size class from 4 to 10 inches bringing home the 8 biggest for dinner. This was a good start for crappie as we are almost a full month ahead of when we caught them last year. Now that we know they are awake we will try and dial in on the larger fish this week and maybe some prespawn bass.

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