Fished Otter pit from 11 am to 5 pm. Caught most of the fish from 1 pm to 4:30 pm. Caught about 35 crappie and culled those down to a limit of 25 as I went. These crappie are getting a little bit bigger than what I caught this summer. It seems that every fall the crappie have grown a lot during the summer or else the bigger crappie start to bite better in Oct. LOL Anyway it was a good day to be out on the water.

It was calm this morning but the winds picked up to around 10 mph this afternoon. It was pretty cloudy all day long. The wind and waves and clouds would hopefully bring the fish shallow. But I caught most of my fish in 18 to 20 ft of water. Some right on the bottom and some about 10ft to 12 below the surface over 20 ft of water. All were caught on minnows tight lining around sunken brush piles. These are natural brush that was once growing along an old haul road from what I was told by some locals.

All these were white crappies. Biggest was around 12" long. Most were 10" and a few were 11" long. All were pretty fat little crappie which is a good sign. We have a lot of flooding of this area this spring and maybe some fish came up though the creek from the river into Otter Pit. It's a known fact that lots of river fish swim from the Ohio River up Pigeon Creek and then up Bluegrass Creek into these pits.

I did catch a few in about 6 ft of water near a submerged brush who's tops just touched the surface of the water. Water is still up so it's covering a lot of the brush that once was visible on the surface at otter pit in the NE section.

Surface water temps were 72 deg F today. It's been warming up this last week. Winds were out of the SSW most of the day then switched to the SW later in the afternoon. Water clarity was not bad to day. I could see three of four feed down into the water. But the water has a green color to it.

Pressure was dropping down to 29.54 most of the day. That's expected when you get a front coming though and as much cloudy weather as we had today.

I used 2" shiners and some 1.5 to 2" long Rosy Red minnows. Rosy Red are a red or orange version of a chub minnow. They are shipped up here from Arkansas. I always try to add a chartreuse crappie nibble to the hook even when using minnows. It makes the minnow appear to be eating something and adds some color to the bait. I think that bright yellow/green (chartreuse) makes it easier for the fish to see the bait in deep water. ie water deeper than 15 ft.


Regards,

Moose1am