Rice lake Crappie

[radar]

On Tuesday my buddy and his 4 year old son and I hit Rice lake out of Bewdley. The wind was up and the water pretty choppy. As much as we wanted to crappie fish, the day was about getting my new boat (1988 Springbok with a 40 ho Johnson) wet for the first time and my buddy wanted to see what his kid would be like in the boat/fishing.

 

The boat was great (for the most part). The fishing started slow but ended up in a frenzy, but the best part was my buddy's 4 year old loved it and ended up wanting to fish for 6 hours. At one point he was killing us with his 2 foot Scooby Doo rig reeling in fish after fish (on his own every time I should add) including a hog of perch/crappie and some sunfish. What a great kid.

 

The frenzy eneded up around 3pm in about 5 FOW when a school came in for about 45 mins- hour. We were using chartreuse or white micro tubes and sometimes minnows. We probably couaght about 50 and kept enough for families mmmmmmmmmm.

 

One intersting thing. I had one hole off the bow I was reeling in light coloured crappie (females?) and he was off the stern reeling in dark coloured (males?). Is this male/female thing correct? I don't think I as catching white crappie. Is this some kinda holding patter where the males congregate separate from the females?

Edited May 11, 2007 by radar

[frozen-fire]

I have noticed that there are some colour differences in crappie as well. I usually get VERY dark black ones once in a while. I also assume these to be males.

 

Only way to tell would be to clean them and look for ovaries or testes. But usually once they die, the black ones tend to lose the colour.

[ehg]

Taking the kids out fishing is alot fun, but a bit of work undoing knots etc...

Good to hear you had success,

Those Scooby Doo, Sponge Bob, Barbie spincast outfits actually work well.

Nice,

 

ehg