Decided to hit Fork Thur and Fri before CrappieFest and give Sherri a chance to get some big crappie. Thur was really windy and we only fished about 3 hrs where we could get out of the wind. She caught the only fish of the day, a 1.54 on a meller yeller Slab Bandit. Friday was north wind but tolerable. The meller yeller Slab Bandit with an orange head and the Crawl'r in mud bug seemed to be what the crappie wanted. Fish were holding 5-9 FOW on their favorite spawning cover. Fish were active early but got finicky after about 11:00. Really had to slow down on the presentation after that and keep the jig still and in one spot. Missed several bites between 1-2:30 as the fish just seemed to swat the bait but not take it in their mouth. Ended with 15 good fish from 1.58-2.07.

Starting to see females spawned out and some still with eggs. With the water temps at 67-69, the fish can spawn deeper and that's what they're doing. There are some fish still 2-3 ft but those tend to be smaller males with very few females. The big girls are holding deeper and may be running to those shallow spots during the night to spawn. But, there's also bigger males out deeper and some of these fish are coming off the top of sunken logs, which makes me think they're spawning on those logs in deeper water. And whatever else they find that's suitable spawning habitat.

wtg Ken and Sherri! 15 will do any day of the week.

Good work.

Solid post with some solid fish. Good job.

Nice report Ken.

interesting.

Nice.

Seeing the same thing with spawned out females. 3 of us kept 31 Saturday night. Would have sworn 90% of them were males but when we cleaned them, only 8 males, the rest were spawned out females. Had one big female right at 2 lbs that looked like it swallowed a golf ball, the rest were 11-13". Then the dad gum 6-8" sand bass drove us nuts and cleaned us out of minnows.

nice

Thanks for sharing. Will try to get out there later this week - once the weather settles down.