I'm curious if anyone else is trying to pull crank baits at Patoka lake. I've done this one time and caught three nice crappie in the Lick Fork Area.

I had a friend call me yesterday and said he was having a hard time finding any fish except for those little stripers.

He's not been fishing the last three months and now he can't locate the crappie in the normal summer places. He can't even find them on his 1198 Humminbird SI unit either. He can find the deep brush piles but he's not seeing fish in them.

I suggested that maybe the fish are out suspended along the breaks or channel in areas that In-Fisherman Crappie Wisdom Book calls "Confined Open Water". When they are out in open water chasing bait fish they can be hard tof ind and hard to catch. But that's where I think that they are. Which is why I'm getting into trolling crank baits for them. I've caught a lot of largemouth black bass out over 50 ft deep water about 10 to 20 ft down. I was really surprised to find that the bass were suspending out over the deep water basins. But I've only caught a few crappie duing this. I've yet to find the right depth, speed and color lure to catch the crappie in big numbers.

Now this spring I did manage to find some nice big females that were getting ready to spawn. They were out over open water suspended and not far from a spawning shelf of water that was about 7 ft deep at the end of the submergent weeds. The lake's color is green due to a lot of algae or other micro-organisms in the water. These old coal mines strip pits are very deep and have filled in with water. They are fully of minerals and have a very high (extreme) conductivity which indicates that there are a lot of Ion's in the water that can carry an electrical current. This is probably due to all the minerals that were in the ground that was disturbed in order to get the coal out. This high conductivity makes it hard for IDEM Fishery people doing their surveys with electric shock boats.

Any way I'm still trying to figure out where the crappie are. I know that a lot of people catch them down south while trolling crank baits.

I'm thinking about buying and installing a "Happy Troller" plate on my motor to help me slow down while trolling. It's either that or buy a Minn-Kota Terrova with the I Pilot in it. It's either that or a new hand gun or a new AR 15 type hunting rifle. Those three things are on my wish list right now. I'll probably just get the $100 happy troller and just continue to use my current Minn-Kota trolling motor and my older hunting rifle. I'm not even sure what type of handgun I would get if I did actually get one. Some thing that's not too expensive to shoot and that had ammo available for it now. Ammo supplies are getting better but not many stores have any 22 long rifle shells in stock. I read where the number of women buying or getting carry permits in Vanderburgh County has nearly doubled this year. I guess a lot more women bought 22 cal hand guns to carry and they increased the number of people buying 22 ammo. No matter why all I know is that there is still a shortage of 22 ammo at the Evansville Gander Mountain Store last Saturday afternoon.

I need to change out the spark plugs on my motor if I keep slow trolling as carbon must be building up on the ends of the plugs. I'm using stabil and sea foam in the gas to help burn it cleaner and keep the engine free of extra carbon deposits. That's helping but I still can't go slow enough without the motor stopping. I figure a little hotter (shorter white part of the plug -insulator) might help keep the engine running better at very slow speeds.

I spend this morning organizing the boat and tackle boxes. I've got three soft tackle boxes of crank baits that I went though and organized some what. All the shallow runners in one box and all the medium depth runners in another box. I've got 14 plastic storage boxes of crank baits with some compartments filled with two or even three crank baits.

Some of the crank baits needs some work. I need to install a new treble hook in a few of them and paint three or four of the old bomber balsa wood crank baits. Dad must have removed the paint off them and never got around to repainting them. I do remember seeing him painting some crank baits but he didn't do a very good job compared to todays painters. Today you can use a air gun to spray paint these baits and get a better finish on them vs using a brush. Dad was never very artistic. He should have talked my mom into painting them for him. She's very handy with a paint brush and did a lot of craft work. She is the artist in our family. Me, I just want to catch some fish.

This week will be cooler and only getting up into the 80's and not as humid. The fish don't really care about the Air temperature as they can just go shallow or deep and adjust to the water temp and amount of sunlight.

Winds were out of the North and East this past two days and the lake conditions will be different than when the winds come out of the South.