Posts tagged Crappie

Hit Mayslake and Hidden Lake, in Dupage County.  Hopes were high, as the water has been warming up. I decided to pull out one of the oldest lures in my tackle, an original F5 Rapala floater, in gold color.

I moved over to the Northeast side of the lake where the sun was beating down and some people had just left.  Weeds were beginning to grow.  I worked the lure in a start-stop-jerk type pattern that was really erratic and long on the pauses.  On one of my first casts, the lure hit the surface in about 1 ft of water.  Immediately, there was a surface boil and this fish was on.

  Over the next 2 hours, the fishing remained good.   I picked up all the following fish, using the same lure and retrieval pattern:

  Even the ducks were out on this beautiful day:

  After a while, the fishing came to screeching halt, and other people began to show up to fish.  I decided it was time to change forest preserves, and I headed out to Hidden Lake.  I kept the same lure on, and worked windblown shorelines.  Most of the fish below were not very big, but they all came right after the shoreline drop off.  Just at the point to where you couldn’t see the bottom.  Most of them exploded upon the bait.  Besides these fish (below) that I caught,   I probably had just as many hits and misses.  

  The Mallards were not as common, but the baby Geese were also out:

  The sun began to finally dip, and I decided that the geese sighting were a good note to end my day upon.

Trip Totals:
12 Largemouth (Largest 15 inches)
1 Black Crappie

Year to Date:

12 Trips
15 Keeper Perch
14 Largemouth Bass (Largest 15 inches)
3 Coho Salmon
1 Black Crappie