Windy days and bright sun aren't my cup a tea anytime of year, but you can't judge a day by that alone - especially in fall. The forecast, as usual, didn't mention wind gusts up to 25 mph! At the house there was only a mild breeze before setting out. But as many of us know, winds that strong mean a front is moving through and fish get mighty irritable biting like crazy.

The water in the different lakes I fish now averages 48-49 degrees and you might expect a bit of a slow down. But as I've found in the last three days and 100 fish caught, you find them you catch them. Yesterday I figured I may as well go to the sheltered south end of the lake seeing as how I left the dang 15lb anchor at home and only brought the 10lb! Small rowboats have a habit of drifting, dragging light anchors when the wind is over 15mph.

At first yellow perch and bass were caught right up against the shore. Before calling it a day, I figured why not cast near this long rock ridge far from shore? Casting parallel to it, a crappie hit. Casting to deeper water, more hits. Making long casts with the wind, many more struck. I anchored in one spot for 4 hours and caught over 40 nice size crappie - a few less than 10", most 11-12"; I lost over 20. Better yet was testing different lures I made. Here are a few examples:


The gills and perch weren't too bad either:


Different lure shapes did well:





A bit of background where fish were found:
The lake averages 7-8' and 14' near the dam (black line). The rock ridge with deep water on both sides is shown and the X is where I was anchored. I cast in the directions shown by the dotted lines.


The depth is around 7' where I was anchored but the giant school was north/northeast of me in 9' - nowhere else (note the water temperature).


I allowed my lures to drop to mid-depth - around 4' worked horizontal to the bottom - slowly. The strikes were weird in that they felt like soft double hits - i.e. fish doing a taste test before committing to the serious bite. Hooksets had to be a gentle raising of the rod tip or the hook set missed then followed by a few rod tip jerks to insure the fish was hooked solid.

All in all, a very productive day especially given the conditions and time of year.

Nice haul!

Awesome post and fish. Good job.

Love catching yellow perch - they're good panfish for eating as well.

Good day on the water.

Nice Work.....

Solid work!

Anyone else not too keen on fishing in the cold? I used to ice fish but I don't see that happening anytime soon. The nice thing living in Wichita Falls: the cold weather didn't last too long and was usually followed by warmer days where I could fish.

Thanks for all the useful info!

Great post!