My buddy Don and I decided to get the boat wet for a bit yesterday on Clinton and do some scouting for our upcoming Veterans Day Tournament. It was an absolutely perfect day out, except for the low pressure. It was way on down there yesterday around 29.65, and that is never good for the Crappie bite.
Circled in red below, the low pressure dips between frontal systems this time of year always makes for a slow bite, and it's a shame too, those are usually some of the nicest days you could ask for weather wise, with plenty of sun and light winds. We were still able to get on some nice fish but it was a slow, very light bite. We found it was best to fish fast and cover as much water as we could. It seemed like every spot would give up two or three and then go dead, so we would just hit the few active fish from each pile and as soon as ten minutes or so passed without a bite or fish, we were off to the next pile. 
We went on to put a nice mess of Crappie in the boat with a few really nice fish showing up as the afternoon went on and the water warmed up a bit on the flats. Regardless of pressure, when you fish the channel edges along the shallow flats as I like to do, you have to take into account that they go thru some pretty drastic temperature changes overnight this time of year. Best bet is to wait for the afternoon bite after the sun has had time to knock the chill off. On the shallow flats in the back of Rock Creek or all the way down on the west end, five to eight degree temperature fluctuations overnight are common. Trying to get out there first thing and get on fish after the water temps have fallen to 56 from 62 overnight isn't really going to do you any favors. Not saying it can't be done, just saying an extra hour of sleep and breakfast at home has it's perks too. Of all the fish we caught yesterday, the afternoon bite was noticeably better. Minnows on a drop shot would have probably been the better bet, but we were after some of those thumps that you feel all the way up to your elbow so were were using jigs only. Z-Man of course, Trick Shotz in White Lighting cut down from 3.5 to 3 on a Zman finesse shroomz jig head.
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AuthorJoe Bragg 
Archives
December 2019
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