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April 8
The last few days on Priest has been tough for crappie(for us). The wind has been frustrating and the rain that dropped in last week has still been flowing into the West and East Fork, Spring, Fall and Stewart Creek.
The upper end of the lake that has been on fire, but has turned muddy with a lot of current, slowing the bite down.
Yesterday, I fished with some clients and had 14 keepers. We started in Fall Creek casting floats with minnows(3ft-5ft) and black/chart Crappie Magnets on 1/16oz jigs. The water clarity has been muddy, but today it was clear…..that’s good. However the current in the creek was still too strong for the crappie to be comfortable. After an hour of fishing with a couple short fish and several bluegills, we decided to leave.
We headed over to Jones Mill with plans of casting our jigs and floats to shallow wood and catching tons of crappie! That is not what happened. Fishing the wood in the back of the cove(where we caught 31 keepers off one stump the other day), 0 keepers today! Then we idled over to the abandoned boat ramp and fished towards the channel. Fishing in 2ft-6ft of water with our floats and minnows we caught 4-6 keepers with several short fish.
I motored up to Pooles Knob cove where the campsites are along the bank. Fishing the sandy bank near the campsites we quickly started catching crappie on our minnows. I positioned the boat in 6ft-10ft and cast into 2ft-4ft. After fishing the bank thoroughly with floats, I picked up my Crappie Magnet(Sho Snuff color) with 1/16oz and started catching more crappie retrieving slowly.
Then I took us into Stewart Creek to try some more shallow wood. Knowing the water temperature was 60, I know there are crappie in the creek…..just waiting for the the water to clear and current to stop. As we approached the back of the creek….it was clear. We started casting to isolated wood with floats and casting our jigs. We quickly started getting tons of bites, but they were from bluegills, yellow bass and white bass. We enjoyed fishing for them for a while, but were looking for crappie. There were a few trees and laydowns on the right bank after the boat ramp that we caught a few crappie on, but still pretty tough.
Tough day for crappie! The current should stop by this weekend and with the warmer temperatures coming in, it will get back great fishing.
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3 Replies
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Tough days, I hate to hear it. I took off work tomorrow and I will be out giving them a shot.
I hate to hear the current has picked up. I was up in fall/spring Sunday morning and the current wasn’t that bad and the bite was pretty good.
The wind is supposed to lay down to,or row and the sun is going to come out. I hope it’s a good day.
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We were there late afternoon and I had 13 keepers off Jones mill ramp today, with one being a 14.75 inch slab.
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Went in the afternoon after work on April 9th. Fishing for crappie, my buddy and I managed a mix bag of good eatin’ fish. We had 12 crappie, 15 white/yellow bass, and 8 big bluegill. Everything was caught within 4ft-6ft of water.
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