Night fishing: Chickamauga Crappie; 7/7-7/8

[paulj]

I took cheez last night to my night crappie hole. It was a beautiful night with perfect weather. We caught 34 keepers and around 12 non-keepers. I caught one slab that was 15 1/4". Cheez's scale said 2lbs. I will post a picture if i can and if not maybe cheez will post it. We did most of our damage from dark till around midnight and after that they just shut off. We where using minnows in around 20 ft of water next to the main channel. We where fishing under green lights, I think the name of them are night stalkers? The crappie bit the basic bait store minnows well but I dipped up a few small threadfins, i think they where threadfins, and the crappie bit them better. The problem was dipping the right size. I could dip a billion nearly microscopic ones but few big enough to use. Anyways the new boat came through again and every square inch of it was covered with a million or two willowflys! The last time I snagged a tree branch durring cff 7 and shook them all in my boat, this time cheez had a 15 million candle power lantern that lit up chickamauga lake and attracted them, so if you where on the lake last night and saw an unusualy bright light it was cheez and I. I spent about a hour this morning cleaning up willowflys, again.

Paulj

 

[paulj]

Hopefully this will work.

 

[paulj]

It says that my picture is too big. How do I make it smaller?

Paulj

 

[Davo]

Pic of Paul's big slab.

 

[polo-dog]

Great crappie Paul! The dipped up minnows from under the light always seem to get bit better in my experience. Something else that you can do if and when you run out of minnows is if you catch a stripe or other fish that you aren't going to keep you can cut him up into strips that are about the same size as the little minnows under the light. Be sure to leave a small piece of skin on the piece of fish for bait and it will stand up to catching a bunch of crappies. Sometimes if I don't have any minnows I start with a little jig and if they stop biting the jig I can go to "fish bits" and keep catching them.

 

[paulj]

Thanks Polo. I will try that next time.

Paulj