In the last week I have made 3 trips to Rocky Fork Lake in Highland County, Ohio. Before each trip I told myself that I was going to fish for crappie, but I always seemed to get sidetracked. Here's a couple of my trips from last week.
Friday after work I got on the water around 3:30pm and fished until dark. I had brought 2 ultra light spinning combos for crappie and 1 medium heavy bass rod just in case I wanted to throw larger baits for bass. I put my kayak in at a public boat ramp and made my way back into an isolated cove. I had planned on hitting a tree in 13' of water, one that has always produced crappie.
I no more than made it halfway back the cove before I saw a school of shad break the surface of the water. I had a flitterbait tied on so I started casting it at the school of shad. I tried everything, burning it across the top of the school, letting it fall to the bottom and hoping it back to the boat, and I even tried the slow and steady retrieve. This school just wasn't going to give up any fish, well anything besides a few snagged baby shad. I took a pic of one of the shad I snagged along side the bait I was throwing, I have to say that my bait looked more like a shad than the shad did. I made a few paddle strokes toward the tree that I had planned on fishing, and then all of a sudden along the bank I saw something chasing shad near the surface. I paddled over and started casting toward the bank and reeling my bait through the school.. I took one cast, and nothing. On my second cast I found the culprit a 15" largemouth.
I took a couple pics and released him back to enjoy the rest of the evening gorging on the schools of baby shad. I went back to fishing and this time around I was focusing on shad schools near the bank. I watched as bait schools wandered close to the bank and got busted up by fish time after time. Fifteen minutes passed by and I lost track of the schools of bait fish. I stopped casting and just sat patiently waiting for another school to appear in front of me. Sure enough about 50 yards ahead of me I see a couple shad break the surface. They weren't being chased, but they were awfully close to the shore.
I knew it wouldn't be long before something found them, so I paddled up within casting distance and started slow rolling the bait back to the kayak. On my very first cast I hooked into something that felt odd. I didn't feel a strike, but instead it felt like a snagged tree limb. Only it wasn't, because it started swimming out into the middle of the channel. I didn't have the fish on very long before the hooks popped out. I'm not sure what it was, but if I had to guess I'd say I snagged something across its back. After I lost that fish the schools seemed to disappear. The wind picked up a little too, which made it hard to find the bait fish near the surface. I did manage to find a stray white bass near the bank on one of my casts. He must have been real hungry because my bait was probably a quarter of his size. Fifteen more minutes passed and I decided to head over and work the tree in 13 feet of water.
I made it over to the tree and started jigging a small 1.5" tube bait in white and silver. Id let out a bunch of line and let my tube bait fall all the way to the bottom. I would then lift the bait up and start twitching the tube inch by inch. Most of the time I would either snag or get a bite immediately. I started off with two small crappie and a very healthy 8" bluegill. It appeared that everything was eating today, at this point I had a largemouth, white bass, crappie, and a bluegill, but I wasn't done yet. I went back to dropping my little white tube bait down to the bottom and working it up the fallen tree. I quickly noticed that almost every fish I caught was merely inches off of bottom. At that point I started dead sticking my tube bait, I would let it hit bottom and then raise my rod tip 3 inches and hold it there. I wouldn't twitch or lift up and down, instead I just waited for a light tick to indicate a bite. In my head I kind of thought of it as a staring match. I pictured a fish watching my bait fall to the bottom and then lift up and look it right in the face. At that point the fish had to make up its mind, eat the tube bait or swim off. Whether or not that was the case, I'll never know but that's what I told myself. At one point I had three bites in a row, without a fish to show for it. Patience soon payed off and I caught the light biting saugeye, to make my fifth specie of the day.
I went on to catch 20 more crappie before sunset. For me the other species of fish were the highlight of the trip. I didn't catch anything worth bragging about, but I had a good time none the less. I ended up catching 20 crappie, 3 bluegill, 3 saugeye, 1 white bass, and 2 largemouth before heading back to the boat ramp.
Saturday I took the day off and helped host my great grandmothers 84th birthday party. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about slipping out and hitting the water that afternoon, but instead I stuck around and helped clean everything up.
Sunday I was supposed to meet up with Neil, Travis, and Jeff to do some trout fishing on the Mad River. However the "Party" from the night before had me too exhausted to make the all day journey. I sent everyone a txt at 6am and went back to bed. When I woke up Amanda and I loaded up the kayaks and went back to the same cove I had fished on Friday. This time around I wasn't going to get sidetracked, I left the bass rod in the car so I was much more focused on the task at hand.....crappie. The crappie were exactly where I had left them, mere inches off of the bottom in 10-13 feet of water. I told Amanda how to catch crappie, but she was dead set on learning how to catch them for herself. (Stubborn) I quickly landed 3 before she drifted out toward me and started probing the depths a few feet from my line. We quickly caught a dozen and the bite died. We decided to move down the bank a little and fish other fallen trees in the same depth range. At this point the sun had started to set over the tree tops and it was getting cold quickly. I patiently probed the bottom, Amanda however, was bored of this style of fishing. She started casting toward the bank which at first seemed silly to me. I looked over at her and just shook my head and went back to vertical jigging my small tube bait. She quickly caught one keeper (10+"), and then another. Before long I had abandoned the deep structure and was casting toward the bank too. She had started casting toward the bank just as the crappie had started schooling minnows toward the surface. A few minutes later we could visibly see crappie rolling 1 foot under the surface all along the banks near the fallen trees. We caught a crappie every other cast until the light faded and we called it quits.
At the end of the day we had caught a ton of crappie in a limited amount of time, so I was pretty happy with the trip. I feel pretty confident in saying that we caught over 100 crappie combined. When we got home I split up the baskets and started counting the crappie we had kept. I had ended up keeping 23 crappie and Amanda had 15, for a total of 38 crappie. To date this is probably the most fish we have ever harvested. I quickly went to work cutting the fillets off of the crappie and then bagging them up in meal sized portions. I cleaned ten crappie and then put them in a quart bag, in which I filled with water and froze. The whole process took an hour and half, maybe two. After all of that work it may be the most fish we ever harvest.
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