Boat Crappie, Shore Crappie

We missed Easter with the family because I was working. So we came up late Monday night. There was still some ice on the lake when I went to check it. Went fishing when the sun came up Tuesday all day from shore. Fished Wednesday as well from the boat and the shore. There was so many boats at the launch and out of 22 people I saw out in boats....not one life jacket. Also there was bass bluegill and perch and one walleye caught. I gave a bunch of crappie to a senior that I take fishing sometimes as he could not make it out. Fish were hitting all colors of plastics and crank baits. Have not seen weather like this in over 15 years. Talk about ice out....summer crappie fishing in the same day. Here are some pictures.

Crappie

Crappie

More crappie.

Very nice mess there Jaime.

You had a really crappy day....congrats.

Arnie

Great report and very nice season opener, Jamie ! Nice slabs !
Thanks for sharing .
The weather is for sure crazy this April but we will take it after a long winter .

Thank you Lionel and Arnie And JB. Good luck fishing in Florida Lionel. Good luck fishing today JB. And saw you had good luck already Arnie. I am heading out now on my friends boat all day. Yesterday I was the only person fishing from shore earlier in the day. I was being crowded by four boats which didnt leave me much room to fish. A man from town came in from the lane and we had a nice chat. He recognized me from my avatar here on the Forum. That is another good reason for having this Fishing Forum. You just never know who you might meet out there fishing. Well gotta go now the fish are waiting......Good luck if anyone goes fishing today. STAY SAFE.

I have to get me some of those crappie one of these days. It always nice to give fish to someone who can't make it out. I have a friend that is on his 3rd round of cancer and can't even eat red meat, so I been giving him more fish then normal.

Your friend must have enormous courage. Always sad to here stories like that. The fresh fish from you is a very nice blessing.

Beauty fish, Congrats.

Thank you Fishquest. Back now from fishing. Holy smokin hottest April I can remember. Usually have a few layers of clothes on during ice out crappie week. We saw a guy in shorts and no shirt on his boat but he was wearing his PFD. I missed a few spots with sunscreen and my fish release hand got a sunburn. Now the fishing was different from the last two days. The fish disappeared from where they were. It was like the Twilight Zone. No crappie. No bluegill. No bass. No minnows. No fish anywhere in shallow water. The last two days you could see hundreds of fish. Today the Osprey was cruising away from the shoreline much higher than usual. We waited about half an hour and down he went into the water and came up with a small fish. So we started there and it was small bluegill after bluegill. The Osprey caught one more fish then it never came back. We stayed with the bluegill and there was a bunch of small crappie as well maybe 50 in total. The crappie were all round 10 inches so we did not bring home any. What a weird three days it was. Monday night and into Tuesday morning there was still ice on the lake. Then summer showed up at least until Saturday. I was thinking of trying some night crappie fishing later tonight. It just depends on staying awake. A bit tired from thousands of casts the last three days. Good thing about fishing in the dark. No mask and no sunscreen and no more parking lot of boats on the water getting in my way while I am fishing. LOL. Just the water and myself tonight. Stay safe all.

Congrats on the successful ice out summer fishing!
Those are beautiful crappie!

You say you have not kept any today because they all were around 10". I fished yesterday morning and caught around 40, kept the best 7, but none of them was 10"

Yes I was looking forward to the text you sent me earlier. That's a great day of crappie fishing. You had great success and kept some as well as releasing many. Everybody knows my personal keeper crappie size is 11 inches or bigger. It has been mentioned on my posts many times. This is just the chosen size for myself. Definitely nobody has to follow my set size or limit. I asked my senior friend what size he wanted, and he said a bunch around ten inches. So Wednesday was 10 inch crappie day. LOL. The biggest one for my fridge was the fat crappie in the stained water, it was almost 13.5 inches. Today we just released them all to get bigger. When I saw how many crappie the other boats kept, and so many smaller than my hand it made me sad. I have always thought there should be a slot size in zone 17 of 10.5 inches (5 years old) That age crappie would be starting its third spawn in the Kawarthas. This is just my opinion of course I don't set the regulations. Some of the fish I saw were like 6 inches long which is 2 years old, so they have not even had their first spawn yet. That 13.5 inch crappie in the picture was about 10 years old, so it was probably about to spawn for the 8th time. Obviously growth rates vary from say Florida to the Kawarthas. That same 13.5 inch crappie in the picture in Florida would be about 16 inches at 10 years old. I saw a few boats this week keeping their limit of small crappie with two or three men in each boat. Some boats were local fisherman, and some were not. It does not matter where people come from, greed is just in a few peoples nature. Good for you for keeping some for your dinner and releasing many for next year and so on. You set a good example for some of the younger readers, as well as us older readers. Going to sleep now, very tired. I did go out fishing after the leafs game, but there was only 12 to 15 inch walleye where I went. Looking forward to walleye opener in a month. Stay safe my friend, see you then.

Sorry the pictures are bad but here is the Osprey fishing with us.