Fished with Dave (sparkchaser) Friday Oct 6th, we checked known spots on the Salt end across from Schoolhouse, Windy Hill, Salome Cove, and all the way to Tonto end primarily using our long 16ft poles off the front with double minnow rigs. Fished wherever there were trees preferably as deep as we could find trees submerged. No crappie caught we were frustrated as we felt we covered a lot of areas only to be skunked on crappie (we did catch some small bass). Then we get back to camp and several guys cleaning loads of crappie and predicting 14lbs weighins for next day. Uhhhhhhhgggggg, well we both agreed ditch the long poles at Roosey for the next day.
I know tree jig fishing should be like first crappie fishing skill but it's the last for me. Having learned on Roosevelt floatillas in 2011 (thanks Art, Bill), we long-lined trolled, and then 5 years later got introduced to vertical trolling off the front (thanks Mac, Bob, etc.). I have been late to the game of probably the most traditional crappie fishing approach.
So Saturday, we adjusted and caught 5 crappie (Dave caught 4 of them) casting jigs into trees. I think if we could have found/hit more trees in that right depth and also holding crappie, we could have done better. Lots of trees in 8ft deep but we were looking for deeper.
Wind picked up badly by 10:30am or so, so was too rough for us to be unprotected in open water.
Some folks in the tournament who did well said color didn't matter, although we found white worked well. Others at tournament found crappie weren't going for jigs at all so basically did drop shot with minnow in the trees. I don't know if they were casting or basically right on top of the trees. I think I should have tried that as well as another presentation to try when they aren't biting jigs.
MinnKota Terrova (10 years old) took a dump around 1:30pm so we headed in early.
