Ray Bob - Crappie Experience

Hello all,

Fairly new here and need some help making great memories with my Pops. I live minutes from Jordan Moore ramp and want to put my Pops and Nephew on some crappie, gills, white bass, etc...

I know this lake has the potential, but I need to know what to do in order to make it memorable.

My Pops is great at fishing with spinning tackle and prefers to use twister tails trolling. Will this work? Or should be just wet bobbers w/ minnows and worms?

Please help me in making this trip a great one.

PS: They will be in town starting Jun 29th - July 8.

RR is a great crappie lake. I literally cut the crank bait off of my lighter bass rods, and tie jigs, 1/4 to 3/8 oz. jigs chartreus and pink mainly pink. Get some minnows and hook through the nose and drop them in the trees. Super easy.

Thank you!!! Sounds about like what we did in Wisconsin when I was a kid. Northland hair jigs tipped with minnows.

Look up the corps of engineer brush piles and find some if you have the sonar, white/chart jigs on pink heads always worked best for us. Keep something handy for chunking at schooling sand bass, they do topwater on that lake more than anywhere else I swear...or just go to windblown points for them too.

Eric

I like having a rod with a chartreuse slab tied on. It sinks through the, “dinks” when they are boiling the water and gets down to the big, lazy ones waiting for droppings.

1/8 Oz jig with or without plastic with minnow or #2 crappie hook with weight 5-6 inches above. Look for treetop on points or ridges or roadbeds in 15+ feet of waters work down to the bottom and try to establish a depth they are holding.I usually look for bois-d-arc. From jordan I would go up towards the 922 bridge and eventually try there too. Lots and lots of underwater stumps when you enter the trees so use extreme caution. Fish are too deep to cast to or use bobbers. If you catch schooling white bass throw that jig out there.

You may want to contact Guide Cody Tucker at 940-230-1901 and book a trip. He is a good guide on RR that can get you dialed in on crappie and sand bass.
Good luck to you and your pop.

WOW! Thank you all genuinely. I reached out to Cody and we're working on dates / times.

If that falls through, I'll give it a go and see if I can put us on the slabs.

Well we went at it our own...Recap as follows

Trip 1: No crappie, but we hit a few pockets and caught some white bass, a spotted bass, a few largemouths, and one hell of a surprise a GAR!? The damn gar hit my powerbait 7" ribbon tail worm. Freaked me out when it exploded near the boat.

Trip 2: No crappie. We slayed the white bass early morning then ran out of minnows. We were only able to get about 15 or so as the "THE DAM" store ran out of DAM bait. We were having fun picking off the drums near the dam and caught a few other spots.

All in all, for me having little to no experience on the lake and taking my Pops and nephew out we really had fun.

PS: Most fish were caught on pink/white jig heads with white or silver/white bass assasin minnows tipped with night crawlers.

Thank you all for your advice.

Just book a trip with Cody Tucker, you will learn a lesson you never will forget. Until you go out and fish the timber with someone who has done it it's hard to understand what your trying to do. It's all about the depth in the timber. Once the thermocline sets up you can hit 25 trees and catch 25 fish. Sometimes you may go 5 trees without a fish, then you hit one with 6 fish, then strike out two more, then hit one with 8, by the end of the day you start to figure them out. Right now they are in about 15 to 20 foot of water. Went yesterday for my second time this year and we caught around 70 and kept 44, all in timber, most on minnows.

Wow! That's a haul for sure. Yeah, I'm going to book w/ Cody for certain. The calendars just couldn't line up. I'll get it pinned down for sure.

You need minnows right now in my opinion. I bought a half pound yesterday and tried jigs also. Used up a half pound of minnows and only had 2 jig bites.

The jigs worked better in the dirtier water up north. Billions and billions of tiny shad up there so I was mimicking the bait with shad colored jigs and I got a few, but you are right the minnows by far out produced. I am trying to wiene myself off of minnows, but Roberts has always produced on minnows

I actually had fun trolling the jigs w/ twister tails. The minnows almost felt like cheating. AHAHAHAHA