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Senior Member
I finally found that place this past summer. I had heard about it but could not figure out exactly where it was. I must admit that I was not trying very hard until last summer. Nice facility. I found out that they want $100 in check or cash and won't take Visa. I like to use my visa to pay for things. And I also found out that you have to have a current member to sponsor you.
All I really wanted to do was to sight in my 222 rifle's new scope. I was not going to pay $100 just to do that.
I found out about the Isac Walton League about ten years ago when I ran into Jim Daniels at the Boat Show. I enjoyed talking to him that evening. Now I get to see him on TV from time to time when he host the show Ask your legislatures.
Right now I have decided to either drive up to the rifle range at Sugar Ridge F&W area or just make my own gun range with my laser range finder and some paper targets out in the boonies. I'll probably use the gun range at Sugar Ridge someday this summer.
I saw a coyote running across a hillside this evening out at Bluegrass F&W area. He had a cotton tail rabbit in his mouth and was heading somewhere fast. I suspect that that rabbit was for momma and the new coyote puppies. This is the time of year that they are with puppies in the den. So he or she was probably out hunting for dinner for the family. That's why he was out during daylight. Both parents hunt for dinner when they have pups.
Last year I played a recording of a siren in this area and there were coyotes howling back at me from both sides of the road.
The crappie I caught two days ago were full of eggs. Those eggs sacks were developing some bright red blood vessels around them which is a sign that the spawn is not too far off.
They should start spawning when the water temps reach 62 to 65 deg F in the depths that they spawn at. The surface may be 65 deg F but the bottom in 10 ft of clear water may only be 55 deg F. If the water is muddy they can spawn in shallower water and that warms up faster. Clear water takes longer to warm up and they spawn deeper in clear water.
Originally Posted by bassmanic1
Member
I fished a new stripper pit today northeast of bluegrass today and caught some nice ones. I just drove around for over an hour today and happed to stop at this pit and I'm glad I did. The biggest one weighed 2.2lb and was 15.5'' long. I had 2 that broke my line close to the boat and at least a dozen that got off. The crappie are really starting to bite now. I would post some pictures but I cant figure out how. Does this site not allow you to post pictures?
Senior Member
You can post a link to the picture. Get a photobucket account and create an album for your pictures. Upload the pictures from your hard drive to the photobucket album. Then at the bottom of each photo in your photobucket album there are several lines of text. One of them in an IMG thing. I think if you click on that line it will copy the link to your copy/paste buffer. Once you have that link copied in your buffer simply open up fishin.com and create a post. Find a blank area of space in you post and paste the link into your post. Save your post and the link should appear in your new post. People can click on the link and see your pictures that way.
Now if you want to you can post pictures in the fishin.com photo forum. There you can link to a photo that's on your hard drive. In that forum there is some new stuff for a post. The new stuff had a way to add pictures to your post. Check out this link:
http://www.fishin.com/forums2/forumdisplay.php?f=4
Senior Member
I went fishing yesterday at Bluegrass. Man you can tell the high gas prices are keeping everyone closer to home. I would guess that there were 20 somthing boat trailers in Otter Pit alone. I heard that Bluegrass Pit's South Parking lot was full and it was hard to find a parking spot.
I managed to catch a few crappie but nothing to brag about. They were all pretty small. I didn't catch one big crappie at all. My best spot from last fall didn't produce a single fish. And noone else was fishing it.
All the fish I caught were in the upper 7 ft of water.
Fish seem to be scattered. One guy told me that he caught a nice 13" long Crappie that was pretty fat. I didn't see it but I believed him. He was fishing for bass. Not sure what he caught the crappie on.
I see one guy that back trolls slowly though the shallower waters. He has a lund boat which you don't see down here much. Those boats are more popular up North. But they have a high transom that allows one to go backwards without getting too much water spashing into the boat over the transom. I have seen guys add extra spash guards to the back of their boat's too. He has a very quiet engine (four stroke) that allows him to idle slowly. Going backwards slows the boat down. My boat won't go less than about 2.0 mph at idle speed on a calm day. But if I go in reverse I can go mush slower. I am not setup to go in reverse. But I could pull or drag a plastic bucket behind my boat to help slow me down. I'd rather get a trolling plate to attack to the lower unit to allow me to engage or disengage to slow down or go fast. I can only go slow when I go into a strong wind. But I think that going with the wind works better while trolling. Although I did catch three crappie at Pataoka Lake last year while trolling into a 15 mph wind out of the West. So I was trolling into the wind when I caught those three crappie. I was trolling a 300 bandit crankbait behind my boat. I may try doing that again someday.
Senior Member
Crappie are in the shallows now. Try fishing the weed beds in about 6 to 7 ft of water. Maybe in 5 ft of water on the pits at Bluegrass F&W area.
It depends on the water clarity and temperature but there were a lot of small crappie in the submergent vegetation yesterday.
Water temperatures at the surface ranged from 59 deg F over the deeper waters to around 63 deg F. I have two of the cheap battery operated Min-Kota digital temperature gages and I have one mounted on the trolling motor shaft about 1 ft deep in the water and the other on my boat's transom about 1 ft deep. The one on the back reads a few deg higher but they are within a couple of deg F of each other. I take the average of the two to get a good solid water temperature. Actually it's a relative water temperature that I am looking for. I don't care if it's an exact reading but I do care to know if the water is warmer in one part of the lake than another area. I am looking at RELATIVE WATER Temps from different parts of the lake or over time. Like between the morning temp and the afternoon temps in a certain part of the lake. I have not taken a water temperature profile in a few years. That's where I take a 25 ft long temperature probe and take readings at 1 ft intervals from the surface down to 25 ft deep. That tells me how the lake is stratifying or not. I do that in the summer months to help find the thermocline. Fish don't stay below the thermocline very long and survive as later in the summer there is not much dissolved oxygen below the thermocline.
Member
heres some pics of the crappie I caught on sunday. All were caught in 1-3 ft. of water.
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s70/daniel240/100_0117-1.jpg
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s70/daniel240/magnumcrappie012.jpg
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s70/daniel240/magnumcrappie011.jpg
Senior Member
Daniel:Use the [IMG] tag line instead of the http tag line on Photobucket.The Http thing didn't make your pictures work.When you use the IMG tag line and copy and past that into your post you will be able to see the line as a link in your post. When it's a link you can click on it and it will take you to the photoshop picture. Each picture in your photobucket album will have three or four types of choise under the picture. Try posting again as Peter had the edit post thing on a timer. We can't edit our post after so many minutes has passed. So we have to put a new post on the thread. I am anxious to see your pictures of those crappie. Good luck. I can tell that you found the photobucket and are almost ready to get the pictures posted.I myself have to try it several times on each forum I post on because some forums let me point to the picture on my computer and others make me use a server like Photo bucket. It's not easy until you do it a few times and get it figured out. It took me a while to figure it out and I had a lot of help from other people. They don't make it easy to post pictures in a lot of forums. It takes a little bit of work.
Member
Senior Member
Now those are nice slab crappie. Did you count the number of dorsal spines to see if they were black crappie or white crappie.
Sometimes the White Crappie males will appear dark colored during the spawn and will look like a black crappie. It's hard to see the vertical bars when they turn dark. But the dorsal spines of the black crappie will have 7 to 8 spines while the white crappie only have 5 or 6 dorsal (top) spines.
Member
I didnt know you could tell by couting the spines. I will do that next time. Some of them appeared much darker than the others.
Junior Member
Those are indeed pretty nice. I am still not having much luck witht he crappie right now, though yesterday afternoon I did get a few nice red ear and a couple really nice gills. I saw one crappie that was swimming at the top of the water. He had something wrong with him and there was a large white patch on his side.
Nice day for fishing though, got some sun thats for sure.
Senior Member
This time of the year the water is much warmer at the surface. It could be 73 deg F at the surface and only 50 deg F ten feet down. So they like to come up and warm themselves I guess.
I have been catching a lot of crappie right at the surface near drop off and over the top of brush. The brush can be in 20 ft of water but the crappie will station over the top of the brush and suspend there. They come to the surface where the waters warmer and they can get energized by the warmer water. Remember that they are cold blooded and take on the temperature of the surrounding water. As they warm up they can swim much faster. They are really slowed down when the water is near freezing.
I actually got sunburned the other day when I was out fishing. It got up to the high 70's and there were few clouds in the sky. I was thinking it was going to rain these past few days so I wanted to work on my garden area and then go fishing after I get the garden planted. But it's been nice and sunny and warm these past three days. I could have gone camping up at Patoka Lake. It would have been great camping weather.
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