Love me some Ray Bob

I just love power fishing for crappie in the timber
65lb braid, Texas Tooth Pics, and a large minnow
Had a crazy encounter with a gar today, Don hooked em, then he tangled up, broke him off after 3 minutes of just trying to play him out pulling and giving him slack, so a few minutes later we see this fish struggling down under, he starts swimming up to the top of the surface just violently shaking his head below the surface of the water, we grab the net, finally get him scooped up after about 3 tries, and boom, finally got him, still had the hook with 65 lb braid still attached down deep, cut it, pulled the hook and let him back in there for all those bass fisherman up there. Surprisingly we had a good day crappie fishing. Hit a tree catch a fish, hit 5 trees and zero, hit one more tree and catch 6, Didn't have livesope today, you just got to keep your head down and grind it out, one fish per tree theory ie: You may have to hit 25 trees to catch 25. They just have not grouped up in large schools yet, but it's coming!

I love it David! That is Crappie Fishing for sure.

Nice work. We managed 30 or so with 7 keepers yesterday. Lots of 9.5" fish still. Its the story of my life.

Nice fish. Good job.

Thanks for the report, hoping to get out for a bit Saturday and do some tree hopping. Name of the game this time of year if you want fish tacos!

When you guys timber fish, where the heck to you decide to start on a lake that has thousands of trees?
Or do you just begin with a random bunch of trees?

Find trees near a creek channel in 20 FOW. If you can find trees at a creek bend or the confluence on two creeks even better. There are over 30 marked brush piles in 30 FOW on most RR maps. Also any isolated tree can be a good location.

Unless I'm north of the 922 bridge on the East side of RR I look for trees in at least 20' of water. You can catch them in as little as 15' way up North of the 922 bridge. Some of the best trees are old hardwoods in ditches, or on points, or near channel swings, or just isolated all by their lonesome. I also like to fish Cedars as well. Some of the best trees are broke off below the surface and they have to be located with electronics. Livescope has ruined me - I will catch myself looking for a wad of fish before I go fish that tree, but like I stated in the original post hit 25 trees in order to catch 25 fish. Remember the ones that produce for future return trips and don't expect to catch fish out of a tree on back to back days. Big Crappie.com has 3 to 4 full time fishing guides on Cedar Creek and they have over 1,000 man made brush piles that they keep on a numbered system, they all keep track of what trees they hit each day so that they don't fish the same trees over and over, in fact they like to give them a week or two break. After a while you will establish some reliable trees that you can rely on and then hit 15 of those productive trees and catch 5 off of each one. Don't fish more than 5 minutes at any given tree unless you hit the mega load. I've had some trees in the past that have produced up to 30 crappie off of at one sitting, but that was many years ago, now days a good tree is one where you will catch 5 to 10 off of.

One of my favorite trees at the current water depth has one little half inch diameter branch that sticks out of the water. under the water is a giant bois d arc. Trees on edges, ditches, old fence lines, 15-25 ft deep. I don't fish the trees in the middle of all the big clumps of hardwoods unless it is a lone ceder or something like that. Mostly I just cover water and fish straight down in the visible timber on the edges. 5 minutes without a bite and I am moving, when you hit the right tree, in my very limited can only catch crappie in the hot summer time experience, they bite on the first or second drop. Usually the first.

5 minutes is way too long to wait in the summer! keep moving!

You say that, but when you have a tree that has produced for 25 years you learn to be patient sometimes. I can't tell you how many times I've dropped a minnow down and nothing happens, then just about the time i'm ready to leave - bam they turn on. With livescope you tend to be a little more patient as you can see them, some times you gotta go to a jig, tip it with a nibble, or a small piece of a cut up minnow tipped on the jig. About 10 years ago my father in law loaned me his aquaview underwater camera and my father and I went and fished one of my favorite trees. We first pulled up and dropped baits down and never got a hit. I dropped the camera down and could see there were crappie in there. Stayed there a little while longer and bam they started bitting and we ended up catching at least 10 good keepers and 5 throw backs out of it.

Learn to spot bois d arc. Look at one on dry land and you will see why crappie like them.

And when you fish that tree the prime spot is dead center, in the morning hit the sunny side, as the day progresses say after 10 am they will move to the shady side, if the wind gets up they will sometimes move up wind of the tree.

They were biting good today 50 by 11:30

And again, took a little longer today with no wind

Good Work! I gotta get me one of those clickers!

Serious question. Do your livewells get disgusting with slime after putting a bunch in there? I always use a cooler thinking my livewells will get too slimed up and require cleaning.

Nothing that won't wash out, every once in a while you do have to clean the screen due to fish scales

If you run your livewell full and run the aerator, be sure to thoroughly rinse out the overflow too. Made that mistake. The slime in my hot garage got pretty ripe.

Funny you should say that, I went out to the shop last night and smelled a bad odor, looked in the livewell and there was a dead crappie in there since Sunday. Had to pull it out of the shop and clean it thoroughly. Gotta check that livewell twice - this is the second time my dad has emptied my livewel in the past two weeks , …. well let me rephrase attempted to empty the livewell.