Because I had to work through the night Saturday, Bobby and I didn’t get on the road until just after 8 am Sunday when I got out. We were launched and pulling into the spot around 10 am and the air was already heating up quickly. Other than the heat while in the direct sun, the day couldn’t have gotten any better. The water was calm besides a few minutes and the fish were biting.
We found two different patterns that produced good numbers of fish. The first was that the fish were holding very tight to shore, shade, and structure. If you could find all three together you would mainly catch big bluegill and better sized crappie. The second pattern was to drift weed flats where the baitfish were schooling up. The crappie were chasing big time but they were mainly chips. We saw a few decent size crappie holding tight in the shade under lily pads in these areas but were relatively inactive.
We tried many baits throughout the day and even though they all worked at times, the best bait selection for the day was a baby shad by Lake Fork Trophy Lures in the “black/pink” color. We also had good luck with “violet shad”. Both baits have half of their body as pink but when we tried straight pink we have very little luck. The two tone body was key for the day.
As usual, we fished the baits fast under a bobber. We did well for the most part working the shores casting as close as we could with the baits set down about 14″. It didn’t matter how deep the water was, that was the depth to be at. Any other depth you got nothing but snags. The best gill of the day was 10.5″ and a solid pound. We were a little weak on the size of the crappie with the biggest being only 11″ but we did well with numbers. Here’s a YouTube video of a few of the nicer fish we got in the boat for the day but this video has more of what we saw.
Despite the small crappie size, we did develop a new technique that worked well as the crappie were chasing baitfish. When we were fishing the pods of minnows that were being chased by crappie, we could get them to bite a fast moving bait but they wouldn’t commit. We found that long pulls to raise the bait in the water column was the best tactic as the crappie were hitting on the fall.
D & B Ice Adventures 
Aha, a new technique to try out…fishing shoreline . I’ll have to try that out.
thanks,
gofish
There is very little structure on the section of river we were fishing so shore is the next best option. Once the weeds recover from Irene this summer, fish will hold more on those I would imagine. We did find a pile of crappie resting at the surface on dense weeds.
I still can’t get over the size of the Gills you guys get over there. Great Job!
Thanks, the river has some giant gills as do the lakes around it. I got one a few years back 11.23″ 1 pound 3 onces.