Can any of you Somerville folks recommend a place to buy small minnows for early morning crappie fishing? I've been to the Shell station on 36 a few times but they only seem to have large minnows.

Try the store where you turn and head to Big Creek. They open at 6 am and have both crappie and bass size.

I second what obiewan said. I have stopped in there the last few times I went out. Crappie minnows are $2 a dozen or $5.50 for 3 dozen.

Do you guys like the crappie house at Big Creek? Seems a little too removed from the ideal solitude of fishing. I suppose that you'll always have close neighbors with this type of fishing. Can't wait to get my 14' boat water ready!

Never been to the crappie house there. I was out fishing yesterday, tree stumps around the ramp in Apache Hills. It was real windy, so hard to use the minnows we bought. Ended up with 3 decent sized cats using shrimp around the stumps with water turkeys. As we were leaving, some other guys were launching are said they were heading out to fish around Big Creek. Said crappie were bitting real well in 10-15ft of water.

I'd recommend just going to Big Creek Marina to get minnows. Someone is usually there by 5:30, and they're $1.50 a dz. I fished the house 2 weeks ago with no success, but all the regulars that were there were catching their limits. They were fishing 10 to 12 ft with jigs. Big Creeks house is nice, and I like it for the winter and summer. It's deep and it seems the fish go deep during those months. Now is the time to fish Somerville Marina's house. Crappie should be close to spawning, and it's shallower there and better for the spawn. It did seem that all fish were caught between the hours of 7 to 9 am. I was there on the 9th fishing piles on the lake, 20ft deep catching fish at 14 to 16ft. Caught all fish before 9 am. After that it was 1 here and 1 there.