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Alright it's a quarter till seven, we're out here real early this morning and we're out here with Brad Taylor outdoors we're gonna go out there and try to catch some crappie.
So why are we out here so early?
We're going to go fish some deep brush this morning. Dan it's on these main river ledges out here in the lake.
And early in the morning these fish spend above the brush, okay.
They're a lot easier to catch, you're less likely hung up so we're going to try to catch some early and hopefully catch a good mass or limit or two by 10:30 or 11:00.
Um as the sun gets higher this morning these fish are going to seek shade, they'll get down under this brush, tuck under docks and things like that.
So early morning is just a good time to go try to catch them.
Alright let's see if we can go catch one, sounds good.
Brad I noticed it looks like we're in the middle of nowhere again, why did you pick this this location right here?
Dan this is just a live Creek here on the lake, it has active running water and this is brush man-made brush that we put out in this spot.
And it's off of a hard drop for brushes sitting in about 22 foot of water and it comes up really hard it's about 40 foot of cast distance away,
And 15 foot and cast distance away, in the other direction.
And what these crappie do they work these creeks with the bait fish and these ledges are just like highways state they prefer to be in 20 foot of water,
And they just follow the lake,
Following that contour and we put this brush out here and it just helps grow out and attract bait fish and I'm it'll hold these fish,
So you said the depth of this water is about how deep did you say?
It's about 22 foot on this brake line and we're 12 feet down just kind of drifting so,
Yeah we're going to pull up here I'm trying to get us kinda stationary here in a second hold this right beside this brush,
You really have to watch these rods because you're going to notice a very light bite that they're just going to bump it he's gonna have it. Just get it Dan.
Alright be easy with them now, alright.
This one's a little bit smaller.
Okay that's a, let's take a look at that fish real quick before you do Dan.
That's a really common sized fish in this lake this fish is about nine inches.
We have an eight inch minimum the crappie has to be eight inches before you can keep this fish is nine inches maybe nine and a half.
But definitely looks good for the future, we'll let him go and try to catch one a little bit bigger.
Alright Brad, one thing I did notice after catching that I'm not used to rods this long.
Tell me a little about this equipment. Obviously it's some sort of spinning rod but how long are these and why'd it why they so long?
I like nine or ten foot rods for this, they're really sensitive and soft and you can detect these light bites, okay.
They just have a just a small spinning reel and we're fishing four pound line,
Looks like you got another one Brad again bigger than the one I caught.
We've got it set up that way Dan.
This looks like a nice sized crappie, would this be an eating size crappie? Yeah that's a nice fish to eat.
We caught this one on a jig, I see that, just a little small one sixty-fourth ounce jig I just cast it out and let fall down on top of,
Dan dan dan you gonna get that fish or
Obviously pull him up here and see what size he is compared to this one,
I can tell you right now he's a lot smaller, alright that's one we caught with the minnow.
Again that's probably an eight and a half or nine inch fish we're going to release him let him grow up and get a little bit bigger.
But you notice this morning we've caught two fish on jigs now and two fish on minnows,
And seems like the smaller fish are going for the live bait and the larger fish are going for the jigs,
Well it's about time I get me some jigs. You want to give it a try? I want to try it, I don't want to catch these little ones and throw them back. That's fun.
When are some times of the year that it's just you know jam up? Is that when they're spawning?
The whole big hype about crappie is they move to the shallows to spawn and they get up really shallow water around a lot of docks and they're really bunched up in numbers.
If you find them you can catch just loads of them.
Anytime you feel anything heavy you give that thing a jerk.
Oh I felt him. You miss him? I missed him but I know what I'm feeling for now.
So you're not gonna miss another? I'm not, I won't take you if I get a bite. You'll never know.
Or still we got to double up here when they bump it it's not much yeah and that's really when you feel them.
There's a little bit better fish there Dan, be easy with that rod and that line.
Well look, you can just pull the line and pull up just steady don't jerk it.
Alright who's bigger that's what we want to see. I think mine is. Well I can feel mine it feels heavy. Hahaha.
There's still fun, those are two nice fish.
Alright Brad uh you're holding yourself a crappie, it's obviously two different species of crap you've got black and white.
Can you tell us a little bit about how to tell the difference between the two? Right, this is a black crappie Dan.
That's what we caught this morning, this is one of the predominant fish.
But this is a black fish you'll notice just a random checkered pattern all over with the spots.
If this fish were white it would have, getting him to cooperate here for a second,
He'd have vertical bars running up him, tiger stripe basically.
That's one way you can really tell but you can also tell by the spines.
On a black crappie he'll have seven or eight spines on top of his back here on his dorsal.
A black crab will have seven to eight where a white will never had more than six, okay.
Six is supposed to be the maximum number but five to six on the white, seven to eight on a black.
And also the black is a little wider fish this away or the whites a little more slimmer profile fish than this dorsal fin i've sent back.
Once you've looked at a few they're really easy to tell the difference but most of the fishing in a catch across our lakes are black.
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