Crappie hunt, Some success..

Ever since the Kawartha Lakes opened up to ice fishing I have hardly been out on them. I fish them during softwater quite regularly, but only a few times during the winter. For lack of time I haven't done any recon work on them for crappies, one of my favourite fish to eat. Yesterday did my first recon mission in search of these tastey fish and was rewarded with some success. Drilled holes at various depths and tried quite a few areas, and finally hooked into a small crappie in 8 fow near a large weedbed. Setup my pop-up, in 60km/hr gusts with all 8 anchors in, and it stayed put. Fished the area hard and ended up catching about a dozen perch, a few bluegills and 6 crappie. Kept the 3 largest for a 1 man fry. Good enough for me. Biggest crappie was a nice fat slab 12". Small tear drop jig with a pinhead minnow did the trick, really have to finesse them and just keep the minnows lively. Will be back for another round..

Awesome Jerry!
I love to eat crappies as well. They can be a frustrating fish to catch at times. But loads of fun!
Cheers!

Nice work Jerry! That 12"er is a nice slab

We chickened out with the high winds

I'd like to try once this year but I'm not sure if that will happen.

We will try and get you on some crappies this spring in the Thousand Islands

If you dont mind me asking what partvof the lake where you on i sure would like to find a few like that myself

Nice Looking Fish! Couple of questions For you. Did the weed bed close by have green weeds and do you believe this is necessary to locate these fish? Also what time of day did you get your fish? We have a cottage on one of the Kawartha lakes and last year I tried for Gills wit no luck. We catch a ton of them in the open water so i know they are there. I was up a couple of weeks ago and tried some areas I marked in the fall with the GPS. No luck, frustrating but not giving up going back in about three weeks to try again. Any tip s or suggestions for these Kawartha pan fish in the winter?

Yes the weeds were green, I drilled holes on the bed and checked and could see them clearly below (green & healthy). The key to finding these crappie was drilling lots of holes, I finally found a deeper pocket in the bed with no weeds and setup there. I could see some fish down there, even before dropping my bait. Then I started jigging and hooked into a small crappie, so I setup my pop-up and fished the spot hard. The main wave of crappie came in the afternoon-to-dusk (2 pm to 5 pm).

Hey Jerry, some nice fish!
My 1st time targeting crappie was with Mark and it took me a while to get a hook into one. Finesse is definitely required and I found my electronics to be invaluable. Seeing the reaction of the fish to different jigging techniques and then timing a very light bite. I was almost setting the hook anticipating a strike based on what I was seeing more than feeling the actual bite.

Just got in to the crappie and love fishing them they are nice but not as nice as mine.

Sorry had to.

LOL

Did you get that one from the spot Matt! Maybe we should have gone there yesterday

Just got that pm today in the a.m ,it has been windy up this way the past few days would not have been that fun ,sorry Jerry for the high jack of your post on your fish.

That's so small. And here i heard that Blue Fox had them dialed in. Psh... He probably uses minners for bait!

In a kind of related note, and to just totally hijack this thread more, anyone seen this monster?

Record sunfish

Thanks alot for the info!

Mike

Nice slab

haha.. You are the man Matt..

That's a huge crappie LOL..

They have a crappie name, but good eats... Yum..