Sorry for the delayed reports, I have been to tired to surf the net. Small weather changes are affecting the bite. Steady sunny weather is prime crappie time. The bite is changing now, so I figured I'd let y'all know due to CAT Jr. Anglers are having a tourney on the 20 th. So here she is.

Spider Rig or str8 up jigem up. Or use minnows are still are outproducing jigs 3;1

Again, fall pattern has them scattered everywhere. People are spider rigging and getting them at the dam, but I'm still on brush piles and doing well. U just have to move if no bites after 2 mins or so. �Best depth on my side is 11-12 ft down over brush or a tree top in 15-17 ft of water. When they are hitting jigs, it really has not mattered the color or anything. I threw a bunch of colors on monday, and they hit everyone of them. Seems like 10-2 pm is best bite right now. If there is not a lot of bait in the area, not a lot of fish will be there. Find the thread fin shad and the crappie should be in the area somewhere. I have been using a Carolina rigged minnow, or str8 up pink headed jig 1/16 th oz with a minnow or jig. White chartrues and black chartrues are top colors. Zoom tiny flukes in albino and red ones are good right now too. The black crappie have come out to play again. We have bee landing a lot of them lately. The monster 13-14 inch crappie have moved deeper. Most fish are averaging 12 inches or so in the brush. Timber and dam have been pushing out the big girls here and there. Sandbass are very spotty. Black bass are very good.

Nice report Carey.

Crappie were not helping me at all today. Good thing my clients asked about Sandbass fishing before we left the dock. After two hours of beating deep water brush and rocks for crappie, we only landed 8. But they were all 12-14 inches.

Gave up on them and went looking for some sandies. Look at the firs road bed with side scan, cause u don't want to motor over them or they will spook. The first one was void of fish, so on to the next one. First cast produced two sandies on one rod. When on like this for a couple hours, and then they vanished. They took home a limit of sandies and 7 keeper crappie. Slow day but steady in my world. Tomorrow should be a one hour limit if the air pressure drops down a bit. It was pretty high today at 9 am, 30.30

I like it 29.85-30.10

Slowly falling or rising a point at a time, like:

29.97
29.96
29.95
29.94........ and so on.

If it falls two points or more every hour, the fishing seems to be always slower. If it's to high or even to low, they will shut down. Nothin you can do about it, but it will tell you a little reason to why ur not catching anything. If it's 30.40 and above, I will cancel your trip. Not worth the time to fish high pressure systems. The day after a cold front is always a blue bird crystal clear beautiful day, but 99% of the time the air pressure sky rockets and the fish get affected by it and will get lock jawed.

Good Job,and thank you for fishing report.

What a day: Monday Funday ( multi species report )

Video Fly Fishing for Sandies ( Below )



Started at Creek X with a fly fishing client at 730am. His first cast didnt really go anywhere, but the next cast he rolled it out perfectly. And, wouldnt you know it, he hooks up.



He then tells me, "Going to be a slow day, huh?". He caugth 40-50 and he was done at 10 am. 95% of his casts resulted in a hook up or bite. And only two other fly fisherman on the entire creek.



Solitude at its best.


After I dropped him off his his car, I went back down and got a limit of sandies in 30 mins or so. -I was side tracked tring to float a fly past some 40lb Grass carp eating disk shaped seeds on the surface. All I had were some clousers and one elk hair caddis which they ignored. But, I have a good fly now, to throw at them next time. ( I was CPR on sandies today so no hero pic )

11:30AM: I arrive home and kicked stuff around the garage. I was bored, so I figured, I'd take the boat out to Lady Lavon for some crappie before the rain hits (sprinkled on me for 5 mins).

2:00 pm: I quickly arrived in a cove and started to fish the shallows in 1-4 ft of water.




I hit every stump I could reach. I landed 34 Male crappie, all keepers from 12-13 inches on average. Not one female. I probably hit 40-45 stumps. So, I went out in to 9-16 ft of water and fished brush and tree tops. In 45 mins I had landed 14 Fat Slabs and everyone of them was 14 inches or so.





All Crappie are still swimming.

5:30 pm: Im home again. Boat back in garage. I'm bored again. So, I am off to Rowlett Creek to find something big to pull some drag!

6:10 pm: My drag starts to scream!

Here is my opinion on the air pressure: Air pressure affects a fish's swimbladder as it rises and falls.

http://www.usairnet.com/weather/conditions/?station=KADS

From what I have come up over the years, the fish are more comfortable in a range from 29.85 to 30.10.

If the Air Pressure is 30.40, or higher, I will cancel your trip.

If the Air Pressure is 29.60, or lower, I will cancel your trip.

If the air pressure is 30.50 or higher, you are going to have a hard time even snagging a carp turd. I stay home and I won't even go fishing.

The reason I will cancel your trip sometimes are due to the air pressure, and I will give you an option to pick a new day, or go out anyways and only catch a couple. So if I call you before the trip and say: " you have an option" : that means I don't like the something about the weather, and I'd prefer we pick another day. I like to limit every trip and then possibly go limit on Sandies after crappie, or vice versa. If the pressure is out of wack, we are not going to do that.



Now, this is not by the book. This is all what I have noticed while fishing. Sometimes they will bite when the air pressure is all wacky, but 90% of the time, the air pressure, will prove itself.

I find that fish 15 ft or shallower are most affected by the rising and falling of barometric air pressure. The fish in deeper water, are already pressurized, due to the water pressure as you go deeper, so they don't seem to be as affected as the shallower fish. Again, this will only tell you why the fish have slowed down and are not biting anymore. There is nothing you can do about it, but wait it out till it stabilizes or just go home.

As an example:



This is a perfect day with the air pressure. You read it from the bottom up. The top number is current and the bottom number is hours ago. As you can see, the pressure is going up, but its rising slow and steady. That's a perfect day to fish in that scenario.



Now, the pic above is a very bad bad day to fish. We start at 29.83 and the pressure plummets all day and won't stop dropping. This really will shut the fishing down to a trickle or non at all.

My rule:

Example: If the pressure is at 29.87 and drops two points to 29.85, the fishing will slow down a bit. If it drops or rises .02 or more, your fishing trip might be a site seeing trip.

If it rises or falls .01 at time, you should be fine.

If it rises more than .02 fishing is slow.

If it falls .02 or more fishing is slow.

If its steady, or rising .01 or falling .01 every hour, fishing is good.

If the pressure rises or falls more than .05 an hour, I'll just go home.

I am pretty sure, a couple of you guys were out yesterday Crappie fishing Sandbass fishing or hybrid fishing, and that 830 in the morning the fish completely stopped biting. The air pressure had risen .02 points at a time within the hour and then it started to drop rapidly as the storm front started to roll through.

Example: We were fishing yesterday morning at Rowllet creek, as soon as we got there we started to pick up hybrids left and right every single cast. Then at about 830 the fishing completely stopped dead in its tracks. The air pressure had risen .02 points and and the fish completely stopped biting. We could see 20 to 30 hybrids sitting right in front of us but would not even budge. And again, there's nothing you can do about it, either wait it out or go home and come back when the air pressure stabilizes. I see this happen to me almost on a daily basis. I save the link in my smart phone, and refreshes every hour as I'm guiding to tell me what's going on under the waters surface.

Great info, Cary.

Carey you are da Man !Thanks for sharing your knowledge.One day when i'm not busy i will def book a trip with
ya.

man id sure like to find someone guide wise to take me out on some bank fishing

Now booking trips for Crappie fishing at Lake Lavon & Lake Ray Hubbard.

Sandies and hybrids have started thier way back to main lake so now I'm back on the boat and on Lavon for your pick of Crappie, White Bass, and Black Bass.

$225 for 1 or 2 people @ 4-5 hours for any kind of fish you want to target.

Sand Bass and Hybrid Striper and Crappie and Largemouth Bass and Channel Catfish @ Lake Ray Hubbard ( your pick )

Whichever lake you pick, you will have fun. And if we limit on one species, we will try for the others!

$225 for 2 people ( $75 each persons added )

Sorry for the delayed reports. I have been working from 6 am till 8 pm everyday and the last thing I wanted to do was type when I got home. So here is the Lake Lavon Fishing Report!

Fishing for sandies is still getting boring. Every time you drop down your slab, your lure will rarely touch the bottom as the fish will pick it up and you usually reel up a double on one line. The sand bass are 12-14 inches on average this year. We have a small jig or fly tied 18 inches above the slab. Most of the sandies have been holding on the humps. We don't have much structure in the lake and the humps are really the only thing for them to hold on, with the lake so low. Usually this time of year they are holding on the roadbeds, but they are to shallow at the moment. I am using a 1/4 ounce chartreuse slab, I pour them and paint them myself. -not for sale.

Instead of packing up and heading in after my clients had enough sandies, we will go see how many crappie we can put in the boat, depending on what species of fish we were targeting first. Every trip produces some catfish on the slabs too. And, this year the crappie are huge. 90% are 2lbs or a bit over, 13-15 inchers on average. Black/chart and white/chart jigs made by Lightsouttackle.com, called Thump Buddies are the hot jig right now. I am fishing 8-15 ft on timber and brush piles to pull these huge slab crappie out of. I won't sit longer than 2-3 mins on a target. If I don't get a bite or a fish within that time frame, I move to the next target. Cloudy days I am fishing above the brush piles. Sunny days I am fishing in the brush piles or super close to the timber. If the wind is not blowing over 12 mph, limits of both crappie and sandies are pretty common in my boat.

Now for the fun stuff I have piled up in the photo bucket. Remember how I said the sandies are getting boring to catch? Well there is a reason for that. And here is why, this is what I am looking at as soon as I pull up to the humps.



-Everyday they are sitting here chillin.

Below, John said he has caught 30-40 fish in one day! So I took him to the humps and he quit at 263 White Bass. Trip was 5 hours but he only made it 2 hours.



On my Humminbird, I like to use my Down Imaging to really watch them. You can tell if your on dinks or keepers after you have stared at it long enough. Pay close attention to the graph so you can stay on the bigger school of keepers.



The White Bass bite is just plain crazy right now.



So, after we catch enough sandies, we go and see how the crappie are biting.



And again, the crappie are pretty big this year, and pull hard. They look like a big bass coming out of the water they are so big and green.





Three man limit of Sand Bass.



Above: thIs trip started at 545 pm. The little one landed the biggest fish of his life so far, 4-5 lb blue cat on the slab. They limited so then we headed out for crappie and got a few before the darkness took over.

Had a great father and daughter trip! She was a crappie master! Never crappie fished before, but she out fished pops! And caught some toads!





Dad still had some game in him though!



She was all smiles the whole trip, as are most.

Pulled a couple Black Bass out as well. Hooked a 6-7 bled and almost had the net on her, but the hook pulled.

Crappie are almost spawned out. They are pretty easy to catch now, but soon, all the slabs will be on piles in huge numbers.



She saw dad catch a bass, so she topped dad to show him up!

So they got a limit of Crappie



And a limit of White Bass



Below: on this day, we limited on sandies in 20 mins or so and landed over 300. Then a storm started to develop and we had to seek shelter for awhile. We saw the sandies boiling on the surface while it was raining, teasing us from the shore.



We had about an hour till dark left, so we hit a tree to see what the crappie were doing. That storm made them go into a feeding frenzy!









Then I finally get Edward out after the rain and wind cancelled trips. Still the day was windy, but he opted to go. Crappie were slow, but got got a few. After awhile I got the pattern down and figured they were just not hungry at the moment, so we hit the gold mine of sandies and filled the boat up.





This morning was greatness:

Got to the humps and started scanning to find the big ones. Took me 10-15 mins to find the keepers and then it was on. Started fishing at 7 am, limited at 730 am, total tally this morning at 8:20 am was 237 sand bass landed. Rain and wind picked up a bit so we headed in as they were very happy and put a dent in them. We trailered out of the water as people we just showing up. I was home this morning by 845 am.



Other than that, I took a couple days off and hit Lake Fork and entered a Bass Fishing Tournayment. Click the blue link for Pictures and Report on that.--------> Bass Report Click Here

Hit three brush piles near the ramp this morning, 20 yards, and pulled out 17 crappie 11-13 inches. As I was out there, 4 more crappie homes were built.

I have never in my life seen Ray Roberts bush piles before. Those things are bigger than a school bus! It would take 100 trips out to drop stuff to make one that big.

If the wind would lay down for a bit, I bet those crappie are starving for a jig! They should be finishing up the spawn and headed for 8-12 ft. Waves were 3-4 ft main lake on noth side of island.

Now when I say I'm fishing the humps, I'm fishing at the bases of the humps. Like all around the bottom of the humps. Sometimes I'll be up on top of the humps but most of the time the sandies are around them no farther than 50 yards usually. Quarter ounce slabs are definitely key. Chartreuse seems to be the color but it really doesn't matter what color they are. Lavon is a little bit stained at the moment so chartreuse is obviously the better color of them all. Every day were limiting within a half an hour weather permitting. Getting solid 13-15 inch fish in the batch as well. Very nice fish this year. Last year it was 10 inch fest. This year is just plain Awesome! -but gets boring, lol.



The humps keep producing blue cats and channel cats every day.



My client and friends, and even other boats fishing the humps actually are still getting bored of catching them after an hour or two.

Again, the days graph always looks like this. -all day long. After you get bored of catching Sandies, you can go look and see what the crappie are doing or the largemouth or the catfish or the carp or even the drum: then you can go back to the Sandy's any time of day. Crazy action.



Nice boots dude!






Today was the same. 30 min limit. We threw back all of the 11 and unders. 99% of the fish we pull into the boatyard actually keepers but no reason to keep all the small ones when there's plenty of 12-13 inchers.




As for the crappie right now, they're finally starting to move out of the shallows And piling up in brush piles in 8 to 15 foot of water. Today 14 foot was the magic number. Meaning that we were in 14 feet of water with a brush pile present in the depth of water. The fish were holding 10 to 12 foot in the brush or around the bush piles. We only hit two brush piles on the way back to the ramp and picked off about a dozen slabs. Black and chartreuse, pink and chartreuse, and white and chartreuse have been the colors of choice. And I am using Thump Buddy's made by LightsOutTackle.com

Great report, as always. Pics never get old