USI Crappie University learn how to crappie fish

[url]http://www.crappieuniversity.com/[/url]

[url]https://www.usi.edu/outreach/lifelong-learning/fitness-and-recreation/crappie-fishing-techniques/[/url]



The University of Southern In. outreach program is having Crappie University come to campus and teach people how to better fish for Crappie.

X-perts in the field will lecture at the Universtity this coming February 13th 15th 22nd and 27th. 2017.

I'm just giving notice now that this class is coming very soon. Registration fee is $89 and you can pay online with a visa card. Check out the USI web site I posted above.

You can google "crappie university" and find the details that way too.

The Crappie University web site will give you the details of all their instructors and also the places and times of the seminars. And you will find the link to the USI web site for registration there as well.

I think that the actual registration is done at the USI web site.

You don't have to be a full time college student at USI to attend these seminars. They are from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM after hours. So if you work you can still attend.

Hopefully we can get enough people to register and attend the classes. If not they may canel this. That's what happened at the University of Cincinnatti this years.

Russ Baily will be one of the guest speakers. I have met Russ while fishing at KY lake. He's a good guy and has fished and video taped many programs for his TV fishing show. So he has met and fished with some of the other Crappie Fishing Pros who fish the Crappie Fishing Tournaments though out the country. This is one guy you don't want to miss hear talking about crappie fishing. He is full of knowledge and is a good speaker too. Ralph Riley is the other guest speaker.

So check this out guys. Hey it's the middle of winter now and there is not much other things to do regaring fishing. What have you got to lose?

PS: I called the people out at USI and talked the people in the USI Outreach and Engagement Office. I talked with a lady named Peggy. She advised that as if Monday Feb 6th 2017 that they had around 25 people signed up to take this class. I found out from her that the $89 fee covers all four days which included four different speakers over four different days. So it's a better deal in my opinion. Well worth the money. They need 50 people to make the class a go. If they don't get over 50 people then they will cancel the class and refund your money according to Peggy.
You can call the USI outreach and engagement office at 812 464 1989 and talk to them about enrolling in this class or just to find out more information. The links I posted about will take you to the USI site where you can register online for this class. Also you can go to the [url]www.crappieuniversity.com[/url] web site and check out their instructors. Some of the best tournament crappie fishermen in the world are here. I can taste the baked crappie fillets right now as I'm tying this. Man this is making me hungry and ready to get out and catch a mess of big slab crappies.

PSS: USI did a similar class for bass fishermen and the feedback that I heard was positive. Everyone that I talked to that took that bass fishing university class was happy that they took the class. Like I said "what have you got to lose". Learn some new techniques and ways to not only locate but to catch more crappie YEAR ROUND. Yes crappie can be targeted and caught not only in the spring time when they are spawning in shallow water but in the summer time when they suspend right above the thermocline and range along the drop offs chasing big schools of shad. And they can be caught in the Fall and Winter months as well. In fact some of the best crappie fishing is in the fall when the water temps drop to 50 deg and they start to feed in order to fatten up for the winter months. In the winter months they can be found grouped up in huge schools in the deep water sanctuaries. If you can locate them you can catch a mess of slab crappie in a few hours. It's all about knowing their habits and this class will help you learn this information and be able to fish for crappie all around the country year round.

Did anyone from fishin.com go to the USI bass fishing University classes? If so what were they like. Was it worth the money? Did you learn something new?

Russ Bailey discussed deep water summer time crank bait trolling with the class for the first hour. The second hour he talked about shooting docks. He brought some B&N rods with him to show and sell as well as a few boxed of crappie jigs and baits. I saw few guys in the class who bought both items and had them in hand after the class started or after the first break. Class went from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM. I learned a few new tricks from Russ. He's a fun guy and has a good lecture style. Russ has fished and filmed some of the best crappie fishermen in the nation. I fished with him cameraman at a tournament on KY Lake year ago and took his camera man out in my boat. We went to the wrong area to fish that day as I could not figure out how to find the roads leading to the other area that one of the local guide told me about. So I ended up going to the area that I new I could figure out how to get there. This was before I had my GPS unit and the road map. But in this area all the roads are called the same name. They don't distinguish between this different roads. All of them had streets signs that said "Antioch Rd". But each road would lead to a different area. I had been shown how to get to the launch ramp at Sulfur Creek and was able to find that area. But the roads going to the area out of the wind that day were unknown to me and I didn't have a good map of the area. Like I said many of the different roads were named the same name. This makes it hard for a outsider to find there way around. We fished out of Mansard Island Resort near Paris, TN. After fishing Sulfur creek a few hours I decided that the Winds out of the NE were not worth fighting anymore. I spent most of the time looking for a Kentucky DNR fish attractor ( brush pile) that was shown on my Garmin eTrex Visa GPS map. But the map was off by several yards and the water in the back of sulfur creek near this brush pile was shallower than the area where the other brush pile was located at the mouth of the creek entering this bay. But the wind was too strong that day for my little 16 ft long Fisher marine Bass Boat with the Square Front end. Waves on KY lake beat the heck out of my boat as it a john boat style and has no v shaped front end to cut though the waves. A boat that I should have never purchased for a bit water lake like KY lake. The only time I take my boat out on KY lake is in the hot summer time when the lake is dead calm. Only then will my boat do well on this big lake. We spend at least a hour searching for the **** brush pile in the back of the bay without any successes. I position the boat so that the boat icon on the GPS display was positioned over the marked brush pile on the GPS map and still didn't locate the brush pile with my depth finder. With a 20 deg cone angle the area beneath my boat was only about 2 or 3 feet in diameter and unless I was right over the brush pile or it was a brush pile covering a wide area it would not show up on the depth finder's screen. But finally I spotted a small turtle surface and dive back down again about 25 yards away. I trolled over there and finally located the brush pile. The Map marking was off by 25 yards. There your accuracy of 10 meters Plus or Minus comes into play. We spend the entire time looking for that brush pile in the back of the bay and not fishing. We finally started to fish but the wind made boat control nearly impossible with two fisherman. One in the back and one in the front on the trolling motor (Me). We finally fished minnows in the brush pile for about 15 minutes without a bite. So it was at this time that I decided to move to the other area out of the wind. The one that the local guide told me to fish. But he failed to show me where it was located and how to get there from the resort where he meet with me the day of the tournament. He didn't have the time that day to show me the area and how to get to the launch ramp for the spring house ramp. So we got lost on the way there. I ended up down in the bottoms and with my partner trying to read the map while I drove. We missed our turn and got on the wrong road. By this time It was about 1 pm and the fishing stopped at 3 or 4. And when we missed our turn the minnow bucket in the boat tipped over. Normally I secure that minnow bucket with a bungee cord. But in our hast to move to the new spot I forgot the attach the bungee cord around the top of the minnow bucket and secure it to the bulkhead in the front of my boat. So then we had no water in the minnow bucket and all the minnows were flopping around on the carpet in the bottom of my bass boat. The cameraman decided to call it quits when that happened. I took him back to the motel on the highway. One of my worst fishing trips.

I was planning on fishing by myself on this trip and was staying at a friends cabin on the lake. The guy at holding the tournament asked me to take Russ's camera man out fishing the next day but I already had plans to get up leisurely with my friend and cook breakfast and then go fishing. This was a friendly tournament and no money involved. So the next morning I was taking my time and enjoying eating breakfast with my friend and his fishing partner. I didn't know exactly how to get to the place where I was suppose to pick up the Russ's cameraman for that days fishing. I had to drive to the Mansard Island Resort and get the guy and then try to go from there to the Sulfur creek launch site. So I was already running late. I got there and could tell the guy was anxious and upset that it took me so long to get there. I should have just told the guy running the tournament that I was going to fish by myself but I could not turn his request down. All I did was delay it a bit. So the trip turned out a bad one as far as the fishing goes. But then after the deadline to turn in the fish we had a party and fish fry and that turned out pretty good. Only thing it that I got a new guy and another friend mad at me. Now looking back it's funny but at the time is was not funny to me. We didn't catch a single fish that day and I don't think we even got a bite either. But we went though about 3 or 4 dozen minnows that I purchased at the Mansard Island Resort Boat Dock the morning I picked up the Camera Guy. I need to figure out his name as I can't remember it. I think it's Darryl but I'm not sure. I'll ask him or make a note to remember his name next time I see him in the class. I owe him a fishing trip. It Bluegrass was not shut down and I had my boat ready to go and he was staying over I'd take him out there to fish for some winter and very early spring crappie. But I have a **** cold and was barely able to make it though the class Monday night. I was sucking on cough drop the entire night to keep from coughing my head off in the class. And I didn't want to give anyone else my cold. My sinus were swollen and my nose was stopped up so bad that I could not talk. I had a sore throat and could hardly speak last Monday night. I stopped at a deli on my way home and got some cold sorbet to eat and make my throat feel better. I've been using saline solution in a natty pot up my nose to clean out my sinuses. And finally my throat is not sore anymore. I got the flu shot this year and it screwed up my left arm as I had a bad reaction to the shot position and the fluid that the pharmacist injected into my arm or should I say my shoulder and she injected me way too high up in the shoulder. Next time I going to have a registered nurse give me the **** flu shot and not some untrained pharmacist. When you get over 65 years old they give you a different vaccine that has four different components in it and it's been known to cause a very sore arm. Some older people who got this shot have been injured for life by the virus shot. Look up Sore Shoulder Syndrome from Flu Shot on google. Then you will see what I'm talking about. My left shoulder was so sore for a month that I could not lift my arm up without extreme pain. I had to go to the orthopedist to get a shot of cortisone to clean up the pain and infection in my arm. It's much better now. I figure that I caught the bug from one of the kids that work in the deli who made my chicken salad sandwich for me. Or I got it from working out in the yard three days ago in shorts and a T shirt when it got up to 60 Degrees F outside. I was sweating and out of breath from climbing up and down the ladder and going around and picking up limbs in the yard. Then I burned the twigs with some old tomato steaks that had a termite infection. The smoke got in my eyes and some of it was in my nose and lungs. So maybe that's why I got sick. All I know is that my head is stuffy and I feel like crap right now. I hope that more sleep tonight will help. I have to get up at 4 am tomorrow and got get an MRI to find out how back my cancer is and where it's located and if it's growing bigger and needs treatment right away or later.

I lost the eTrex Visa from Garmin some where between Otter Pit's parking lot and my home. I also lost a camo bag with a Fox Pro FX3 caller and a Johnny Stewart Caller in the bag. I guy found the bag with my callers and called me to come get it from him. He said he found it in the middle of the road and got out, picked it up and took it back home with him. I had my name and phone number written on the outside of the bag in magic marker INK and he saw it and called me. I offered him a reward for finding it for me and calling me but he would not accept the reward. So I just thanked him and sat down and talked with him and his wife for a hour. We still have some good people in the world. He was one of them. Most others might have taken it and kept it for themselves. But I never did find the eTraex Vista GPS device. It was much smaller than the bag and not in the bag so it was lost. If someone find it they will have all my KY lake and Bluegrass and Patoka Lake GPS fishing spots as they are all marked and saved on the GPS unit. It had a Garmin Cover on it and it was black in color. I figure that it feel off and someone found it or it landed in one of the many ditches on the roads between my house and the Blue Grass Fish and Wildlife area. It cost about $400 brand new back in 2003. I replaced it with another Garmin Monarch 650T which is much better and has a larger screen. But since I got the Humminbird 898C SI sonar unit with GPS I don't use the Garmin GPS much unless I'm out hunting in the field. One the boat all my Waypoints are on the Humminbird unit.

The Trollers Bible is a book that I purchased several years ago and used with great success on Blue Grass Pit in Warrick County, IN at the Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area. I got the good at Gander Mountain or I sent off for it and bought it over the internet. I also tried the planer boards that are used to take the baits out to the side of your boat so that the boat doesn't have to pass over the shallow water where the crank bait are running. I quit doing this at Bluegrass Pit got too crowded for me to drive my boat along the break lines (structural drop offs) without running into some other boat. Now if the lake is not crowded and it's a hot summer day around Noon this technique works very well.

I tried to see if Russ ever used or knew about tying a trailer jig to the back hook of a bandit 300 mistake crank bait and use that to catch fish but Russ seem uninterested in this method. But I found that it will catch fish when nothing else will in the hot summer months. What I discovered in using the Precision Trolling bible is that I was not allow enough line out to get the baits down to right over the thermocline. My Humminbird 898C SI unit was no lying to me when it showed lots of fish suspended down around 20 to 25 ft deep. So when I let out more line (10# Stern Mono for the main line) the cranks went down deeper. Make sure that the crank bait is tuned to run straight. That's why I like the Bandits as they are tuned right out of the box. I've also use the old balsa wood Bomber baits (coachdog waterdog) in white back ground with brown spots on it. These will catch crappie and bass. If you wonder where the fish went during the dog days of summer this will show you where they are and hot to get them to bite. They are reaction bites by neutral fish that are suspended up off the bottom but still deep below the surface and over the DEEPEST parts of the lake. Look for areas that drop from 20FT down to 40Ft and then 60 ft which is about as deep as Bluegrass Pit gets. I discovered this by accident. I was going to fish the points and shore line drops on the South end and East side of the pit. But in order get 200 ft. of line out back behind the boat it took a while. So I figured I'd go out over the deep water, deploy the line/bait and then swing around towards the shoreline breaks or drops and troll them. But before I could get the line all the way out just after leaving the ramp area I had a bass on the crank bait and it was up on the surface dragging the fish behind the boat. I had to reel the fish in and put it back in the water. Short Bass as the limit at Bluegrass is 18" long. So all short bass get returned to the water IMMEDIATELY after I catch them. This is critical especially in the hot summer months when the surface water are so hot that they don't hold as much dissolved oxygen as the subsurface waters. Waters in the deeper areas around 15 to 25 ft. is much cooler and may hold more Dissolved Oxygen. I' can't test this theory until I get my YSI Dissolved Oxygen meter fixed and that will cost at least $300 for a news probe with a longer cable on it for my unit. This is a research grade unit that I use.

Now the key to this method is the use about 18" of a 6 lb. Stren mono to tie on a 1/16 oz. lead head jig with a soft plastic bait on the jig head. I use the Squirmin Squirts in White Lightning 1.5" long baits from Bass Pro Shops. Add a crappie nibble to the bait's hook too. Now tie a stainless steel swivel to one end of the line and the bait to the other end. I use the palmar knot for this. Attack the swivel to the back split ring that holds the rear treble hook on the crank bait body. Now your ready to troll this combination out the back of the boat.

Now I'm just really getting started at this. So I only use one pole most of the time. I have my boat setup for two poles as I have two rod holders. I use a ski mirror on my console so I can drive the boat and watch the pole on my starboard Side at the same time. If I'm fishing by myself in the hot summer months I'll put an umbrella up over my seat to keep the sun off me a bit. It also helps me see the sonar screen better in the shadow of the umbrella.

Like Russ said in the lecture last Monday Night the water temperature should be in the 80's or above at the surface. The water temperature ten feet down is around 70 deg. or ten degrees cooler. And down around 25 ft. it's much cooler water than at the surface. This is why the fish are there in the middle of the day. They may be in a neutral mood. Maybe they are sleeping. I don't scuba dive anymore as my equipment sat in the hot attic in my house for years and then dry rotted the straps for my scuba mask and other things. Beside my health won't allow me to scuba dive by myself and even when I was young I never went diving by myself. Always have a dive partner with you in case you get into trouble. I saved a friend once when he ran out of air at 80 ft below the surface and I stopped him from accelerating up to the surface when he panicked big time. I grabbed his foot and pulled him back down to me and offered him my regulator and then we buddy breathed our way back up to the surface slowly so as not the get the bends. He would have died if I had not done that. He forgot to check his tank pressure before the dive. Just as he forget to take his sea sick pills which caused him to puke when we got back to the boat. I ended up diving with some stranger who wanted to spear fish. The thing with this guy is that he didn't bring the fish back up after he got them on his tether line. He cause blood and even worst (thrashing fish movements in the water) and this attracted sharks in about 10 minutes or less. We saw them circling us and I decided it was time for Him and I to get out of the water and go dive some where else. He didn't like that and went and speared another fish. Now he had to live fish on his tether line. The spear went right though the fish and out the other side so the fish had the line that attaches the spear to the spear gun going though it's side. The fish could still thrash around on the long loose tether line. After I got out of the water the dive captain had to bring all 20 of the divers out of the water because of the stupidity of my dive partner. The captain told him before we went into the water that if he speared a fish he was to bring it up to the boat right away. So my second partner ruined the dive for everyone. You learn a lot about fish by observing them under the water.

I wish I had one of those under water TV cameras to deploy at times. But the water has to have good visibility for those to be really useful. Our dive was off the coast of Panama Florida and the water visibility was only about 40 ft. I was used to diving in the Florida Keys or in rock quarries at home that have great water visibility such as 200 ft.

Anyway sorry for the distractions. Try the Precision trolling this summer and see if you don't some fish. Or stay home in the AC and watch summer TV programs. The decision is yours.

PS: When I was very young (8 years old) I started going down to KY lake with my father. We would rent a boat and bass fish on the main lake and the bays or creek channels. We fished some of the islands out on the lake on the West Side of the lake just North of Cypress Bay. We use two oars back in those days and they were much quieter than today's trolling motors. So we often would use the gas motor to go up above a fishing spot and then let the wind push us back over the fishing area quietly. This worked great unless you got hung up on a stump and have to row into the wind or use the motor to go try and retrieve the crank baits. But one day we were motoring from the head of one island to another fishing spot not too far away. So I allowed my crank bait to be dragged behind the boat. Lo and behold I caught fish doing that. In just a short distance I'd have a sauger or a crappie hit the crank bait and I'd reel in a nice big fat crappie. Now this was in the early 1960. I had rediscovered what the Herters Guide Book had been writing about all by myself. I've also caught large mouth bass on KY lake that were in the 4lb. to 6lb. range by dragging Buck Perry's Spoon Bills behind the boat with lead core line and a ocean type fishing reel. That was fun. Have you read Buck Perry's book on Spoonbilling?

Last night at the Crappie University Class at USI the guest speaker was Doug Sikora. He goes by High Tide on crappie.com too. He's a very personable guy and just loves fishing and especially crappie and perch fishing. If you check out his Instagram site [email]Skiora_Doug@instagram.com[/email] you will see some of his pictures of the fish he catches.

Doug talked a lot about the life cycle of the zoo plankton and how they effect the food chain all the way up to the bigger fish. How sunlight effects the movement of the zoo plankton up and down in the water column with the rising and setting sun. How sunlight effect the bite and how the different baits and colors effect the bite. He taught the class how to tie a loop knot to make sure that the jig hangs straight and parallel with the lake bottom or the horizon and doesn't hang with the head up in a vertical position or down in that vertical position. He talked about drop shots fishing and how to tie the jig on the main line leaving a long tag line for the weight to hook onto at the bottom. I used that setup years ago in the 1950's when I was 8 years old and fishing for crappie on Cypress Bay (Kentucky Lake) with my father. We use the KY LAKE CRAPPIE rigs. They consisted of two hooks with the weight 1/4 lb on the rig. You could buy three pre-tied rigs and the lines were wrapped around a long cardboard tube and sold as a package. We went though a lot of these as we fished over stumps and brush along the banks.

Doug also talked about matching the size of the jig head weight to the type of bobber to balance the two together. When a crappie ***** in the jig into it's mouth by flaring it's gill covers and inhaling water with a vacuum effect the weight on the bobber is relieved and the bobber will pop up higher in the water and some times lay over flat. Set the hook quickly when this happens. Crappie don't nibble on the baits like bluegills. They **** it into their mouth with the water and then if they don't like the feel, smell or sensation of the bait they will spit it out fast. You have to be quick and watch the line and bobber to see when they have the bait in their mouth. I don't jerk the hell out of the rod when I get a bite and I use a Richard Williams 7'6" crappie rod that has a lot of give to it. So when I do set the hook the rod absorbs a lot of the pull and doesn't pull the jig hook out of the crappie's mouth. Now if the hook gets in the upper lip area of the crappie mouth it will be harder to get the point of the hook into that area and it pays to have a very sharp hook(s). I use a diamond impregnated electronic hook sharpener to sharpen my hooks during the winter months and get them ready for spring fishing. If your hooks get rusted then it will pay to sharpen them back up and protect them from moisture. Especially on your expensive crank bait hooks. Doug suggested taking the back hooks off a crank bait and replacing them with red treble hooks. Red color is caused by red wave length of light reflecting of the red hooks surface. Other wave lengths of light waves are absorbed and not reflected so you only see the red wave lengths. Red waves are have longer wave lengths than Blue light. Shorter blue wave are absorbed by the water more and thus the red light is the last to be absorbed in the deeper waters. I think I got that right. Don't quote me on this. Look up the wave lengths of the different light colors and double check this. I don't use red hooks. I use the gold Aberdeen type wire hooks in a larger size. I wish that someone would make a larger sized thin wire crappie hook and add a smaller jig head to it so that you get a much slower rate of fall when the jig sinks into the water. A slow fall will get more bites. But you have to have the patience and watch the high colored fishing line carefully to detect the bites. The line may not be as tight and will not transfer the vibrations of the bite as well as when you have a very tight line from the jig to the tip of the rod. I hold onto the line with my fingers to help detect light bites. The bits are all the same from the crappie's aspect. They always **** the bait into the mouth the same way. But the length of the line out, the diameter and type of line, and the amount of sag in the line between where the line enters the water and the tip of the rod will alter the feel of the bite for the fisherman. So I try to keep the line tight as I can in order to better see the bite on the line and also feel the bite with my hands on the sensitive graphite rod. Cork handles may be pretty when they are clean but maybe they also help the feel on the rod with your hands. Cork Vs. the foam rubber handles could make a difference in how the bite vibrations are transferred from the bait, up the line to the rod and into your hand/fingers.

Doug talked for two hours and didn't stop for a break until about 2/3 rd though his presentation and I didn't see any one complaining. Every one seemed to have a good time.

See you next week.

I think that Doug Sikora's fishing partner will be the next guest speaker. He another crappie tournament guy and fishes in the Indiana Slab Master's Tournament during the 2012 classic and had Doug as hit fishing partner. But you can call the USI outreach office and make sure who the next speaker will be. I'm just guessing based on the old proposed schedule of speakers. The first guy bailed so the 2nd guy on the list was the first speaker. And the the third guy in the list was the second speaker. So I figure that the forth guy on the list will be the 3rd speaker. But I could be wrong as I'm just guessing based on what has happened so far. Maybe the 1st guy who was scheduled and bailed due to an injury will be able to speak at the last class? That would be nice if he could make up his missing his scheduled class. Hope he is recovering from his injury.

I just reviewed the Precision Trolling Ap and found that the data has to be purchased. They have a lot of different companies baits in the data base. For instance the Bandit Baits are categorized as the Bandit 100, Bandit 200, Bandit 300 and then Bandit 400 and so on. Each bait costs 1.99 to purchase Now if you are buying all the data for all the different types of bandit baits it will add up. And if you buy the other data for the other lure companies and all their various models it will become very costly. I would not to that myself. I already purchased the Precision Trolling Bible for myself and it contains the dive curves for a lot of the different bait companies and a lot of their baits. The dive tables or curves have been copied by various people and were shown on the [url]www.crappie.com[/url] forums years ago. I paid for mine. Other's are coping them off the web anywhere they can find the.

Now the guy that developed these dive curves for the various baits had to pay a scuba diver to dive down and watch each bait pass by and then record the dept and then the guys in the boat documented the amount of line out back behind the boat when the lure depth was recorded. Now as a former scuba diver I know how much work that would entail to do all that work and to collect all that data on the various crank baits from all the various companies. That's very time consuming. And it costs a lot to get the scuba tanks certified and tested and then to refill the air tanks for each dive. The scuba equipment is not cheap and it cost's can go into the Thousands of dollars for all the equipment. Tanks, regulators, BC, Depth Gages and tank pressure gages, Masks, Fins and Snorkles, Wet Suit, Hoodie and gloves, Safety Knife and booties. The training to become a certified PADI diver cost money as well and take a few weeks of time to get the training. And then you have to stay in great shape in order to be professional diver. You never know when the regulator might fail or the mask might get kicked off by our partner and you have to know how to react to this hazardous situation. Like when your partner who's diving with you in the murky ocean at depths of 85 ft suddenly runs out of air and tries to race to the surface so he can breath. Endangering his life. You have to react and stop him from ascending too fast and get him to buddy breath off your regulator. Some guys carry two regulators on their tanks with extra hose to do this in case of an emergency. Or in case your main regulator breaks you will have a spare to breath with. So I didn't mind paying for the book. I got my copy at Gander Mountain in Evansville, IN. I have two "trolling Bible" like books and the other one talks about adding different weights to the crank baits to get them deeper. You can also use a down rigger which are not cheap to get the crank baits down to various depths. That might be easier to use out at Bluegrass as the baits won't have to be 200 ft back behind your boat to get down to 20 ft depths. They can be right under the boat and only a few yards behind the weight that's connected to the downrigger thing. That way when your are following a 12 ft contour line using the Lake Master map of Bluegrass Pit and your Humminbird 898C SI sonar's screen map you can maneuver the boat faster and keep the baits out of the shallower waters where the submerging vegetation (Milfoil) grows. I don't like getting the crank baits into the weeds as the treble hooks get fouled on the weed and then won't run true or dive as deep. There are some areas on Bluegrass that have flats full of milfoil grass growing in water up to 7 ft deep. Then the milfoil stops growing around 8 ft to 9 ft deep. So there is a real edge created at this point. But the edge is not straight. Its goes out more from the shoreline and then in other areas it's cuts back into the shoreline. So the edge is irregular in shape as it follows the irregular depth on this man made lake. I found this out the very first time I left the South Ramp at Bluegrass Pit and cross over to the East Side of the Pit before going North. My depth finder was showing the depth come up to 2ft and then dropping back down to 15 ft several times in a rows. And I was staying the same distance from the Eastern shoreline. I discovered the varying topography on the lake bottom that was created by the mining company when the worked this strip mine back in the 1970s. I saw a google earth map from that time period that showed the pit without any water in it yet. That was an eye opener for me. Have any of you guys noticed this on Bluegrass on the East side of the pit near the older main concrete launch ramp? The area before you get to the H part of the Pit. IE The area south of the H and on the Eastern Bank. Work that area and see if you catch any fish on those drop off or up on the grass when it's a cloudy day or in the evening hours. I once caught 40 something small crappie in that area right at dusk. It was the fastest crappie action that I've ever hard. One of those day when they practically jumped in my boat. I have a picture of them in the bottom of my boat which I took right before releasing them back to the water all alive. They filled up my small live well and I had to keep fresh water running into the live well to keep them alive and feisty. It was as much fun as a fisherman could have. I don't have the picture on my hard dive on this computer as I lost the data when I had to reinstall Windows 10 the second time. I had to reformat the hard drive and then recover the windows 7 program that I had stored on DVD when I got this computer brand new. Then I had to install Windows 10 again. I found out later that my video card was the culprit and it was over heating and causing my computer CPU to crash. I replace the video card with another older one and the computer was taken to the computer shop and some new bigger cooling fans were added to the case. Now it works good again. But I lost some of the photos on the hard drive. I have them backup on on one of my two other external hard drives but it's a pain to get them off those external hard drive and back into my Asus Desktop's computer's hard drive again. If it was easy then everyone would be able to do it. Ha Ha. Some day I'll get that done and post the picture in here for you all to see. Now they were only about 9" to 10" long but they were a ball to catch. I normally catch and release these fish after I'm done fishing the spot. I wait until I'm away from the spot where they are biting good before I throw them back into the water. I fear that if I release them back into the water right away that they will spoke the other crappie and the bite will stop. So I don't release them right away. I normally only keep the limit in my live well and then take them home to clean and eat them. I love crappie fillets. Which is why I fish for crappie out there. Most people frown on you when you tell them you like to eat Large Mouth Bass. You get some disapproving expressions from other people when you tell them that you eat LM bass for dinner. But I use to do that. I use to fish for LM bass at KY lake in the late 1950's when I was just 8 years old and we caught and filleted a lot of LM bass as well as Bluegills, Crappie, Catfish, and Sauger each year when we (dad and I) went down to rent a boat and cabin on KY lake in the Spring and fall. Dad fished KY lake with his friend right when it first open and he has some great pictures of huge stringer of LM bass that they caught back in the 1940's.