Cat and Mouse Fall Crappies – Part 1

Over the last 8 days or so my fishing adventures have been met with cold overnight temps, high winds, heavy frost and falling water temps. These conditions made for a fun few days of trying to put the puzzle back together again every morning. It seemed that everyday something changed just a little bit and threw us off. So let’s back track to the start of these 8 days or so of me fishing.

Some of the crappies from day two

My buddy and I heard some reports of some nice gills starting to be taken again in the shallows of Lake Erie. We wanted to go fish the big pond, Lake St. Clair but the wind had not been to kind to it and had muddied it up pretty good and there was a lot of weeds and leafs on the water in the areas we wanted to fish so we decided to hit the water in my back yard instead.

Erie isn’t really know as a hotspot for fall pan fishing, but as a kid growing up fishing with my dad I learned some areas that made you think it was a panfish producing machine. Now when I compare the two above mentioned lakes to each other St. Clair by far has better Gill and sunfish, but Erie can hold its own and give up 8 and 9 if you put your time in and do your homework. When it comes to crappies Erie is pretty dang good. I have never chased crappies on St. Clair so I am going of my buddies’ word and he was impressed by lake Erie’s crappies.

We started with the mind-set of chasing gills and with the hope that the crappies have started moving back in from the roaming the basin. The 1st day saw us catch mostly gills, sunfish and one small crappie. We ended with about 15 or so keepers. That night the weatherman gave us a warning of heavy frost. Upon waking up and going down to the boat we saw the weather man finally hasn’t lied to us. The boat was cover in a thick slick layer of frost and ice. We loaded up the rods and tackle into the boat and off we went.

What the cover looked like that we found the fish relating to.

We headed back to the same place we had fished the day before. But this time we wanted to try to find a few more crappies. We were met with a very slow bite the next morning at 1st the water had dropped 2 full degrees at the surface. So we had to wait for the sun to come up a bit more. We thought if it could heat up the water a few degrees we would be able to catch some fish and get them feeding. Well that’s just what happens. We started out fishing the same piece of cover that we ended our day before on. We started out catching some small largemouth and gills, then like a light switch the crappies showed themselves to us.  We ended that day with a little over 20 fish in the livewell.

Little Smallie Caught while throwing hardware

When we got back to the dock we sat water side and chatted about things. We then decided that what we saw that day was just the start of the crappies moving in. So we thought it would be a good idea to rest that area, and spend the 1st part of the week getting caught up on our jobs so we can have a paycheck. The game plan was to hit it again Thursday or Friday but my buddy got swamped with work. So I spent a few days test fishing some other areas and chasing smallies on the river by me.

My buddy wasn’t able to get away from his job until late Saturday afternoon so we made plans to meet up for a few hours of fishing. Then hit it hard the next day.

To be continued Cat and Mouse Fall Crappies – Part 2!

Stay tuned your going to want to see whats coming up!