I went fishing at Bluegrass Pit Tuesday. Checked the surface temps with my Minn-Kota Temperature gauge attached to my trolling motor transducer and my transducer at the back of the boat. Both temperature gauges are about 1ft to 2ft beneath the surface of the water. Both were reading around 70 deg around the shallower bays and around 67 deg over 66 ft deep water in the main part of the pit. But in the shallower waters the water temperature checked out at 63.7 deg F at the bottom in 6 to 8 ft of water. It was a little warmer at 4 ft depths near the bank.
What does this mean? Well not as much until I add that I also caught a few male crappie in the 3ft deep water near the weed line. These crappie were in full spawning colors. I caught one male crappie that went 12" which is a good crappie size for Bluegrass's Pits. One female was caught in a little deeper water, about 8ft deep water. She went 11.5". I didn't weight either of them as I was tired from fishing all day long and my scales were buried in the boat somewhere. But they were not skinny fish. Both fish were very stocky and had thick backs. They made some nice fillets too.
While shopping at the Boonville Walmart last Friday I had a gentleman ask me if the crappie were running. I told him that the next week was going to be the start of the crappie spawn around here. Man I guess that perfect.
It's going to rain but the water temperatures are perfect. If you go fishing for crappie make sure you check out the shallow waters 2ft to 8 ft deep. I fished some 10ft depths and 12ft depths in spots known to have crappie in them and they were devoid of fish at that time.
I noticed that the fish were a little spooky too. I had to finesse them into biting. I added a crappie nibble to the jigs and that worked a few times. But later on I used plain minnows if a fish hit and missed the jig. And I added some Dr Juice. The plastic bottle of Dr. Juice is getting dried out so I added some cod liver oil to the bottle. You can by cod liver oil supplements in the pharmacy section of walmart. They come in large plastic pills filled with the cod liver oil. You get about 100 CLO pills in a Plastic Container. Simply open the end of each capsule and squeeze the cod liver oil out onto your bait. In this case I squeezed the oil out into my Dr. Juice Plastic bottle. The Cold liver oil emulsified the dried up Dr Juice ingredients and enabled me to use the Dr Juice on my baits. I was using hollow 1.5" Squirmin Squirt plastic jig bodies from Bass Pro Shop. I just squeezed some Dr Juice inside the hollow part of the plastic jig body. Add a small minnow to the jig hook and then added a chartreuse crappie nibble to hold the minnow on the hook better and to add scent and color to the bait. That and a small slip bobber that's practically weightless. I use the styrofoam 1" long oval shaped slip floats from Betts. I get them at Walmart. I set the bobber stop (thrill thread type with nail knot or bobber stop knot) onto the 6lb test Stren Magniflex line add a 3MM red bead and then the Betts foam slip bobber. The slip bobber is white with a red stripe around it's upper end. Then I tied on a 1/16 oz lead head crappie jig. Again I get these at Walmart. Add the Squirmin Squirt jib body to the jig head and keep it on with a drop of super glue. The super glue goes on the jig where the body fits over it. Once the super glue dries the plastic jig body won't get pulled off the jig as easily by short biting fish.
Water was pretty clear in the pit Tuesday. I say that Bluegrass's water was much clearer than Otter Pits. Maybe the Algae has not bloomed as fast in Bluegrass pit as in Otter Pit. Otter Pit holds much less water and will warm up faster. So the algae and submergent vegetation grows faster in the spring at otter pit.
I found some old willow trees that were submerged and that's where the crappie were hanging out.
I also trolled the shoreline with a crankbait but didn't have any luck in the 10ft to 8ft depths. All I caught was weeds. I was going around 1.5 to 2.0 mph trolling 300 series Bandits on 10lb test stren green line and let out from 50ft to 75ft of line depending on the depth of the area being fish. I could feel the baits hitting the bottom when I went over 8ft deep flats. So this setup should run the baits right over the bottom in 10 ft deep flats. I was surprised I didn't catch anything. I did hook one small fish, probably a bass in the very back end of the Second Large Bay on the West Side of Bluegrass Pit. Second bay from the South Launch ramp. But that fish got off. I only saw it on the surface when I noticed that my rod was bending more than normal. So I put the boat in neutral and grabbed the rod out of the rod holder and started to reel in the line. That's is when I saw the fish trashing around on the surface about 40 ft behind my boat. We don't get to catch them all, but that's Fishing!
All in all I had a good day and added a few more fillets to the freezer.