It was such a beautiful day and I could hear the fish splashing every time I rang up the till, was driving me crazy so after lunch I just hung the closed sign up grabbed the dog and headed to the lake. When I got there was hardly anyone on the lake except for a couple boats and it was windy as heck but not a cloud in the sky, I actually had a difficult time motoring out to my first spot with the Min-Kota it was so bad. Any way the graph said whoa, so I pulled up and decided to go with one of my Dandy Crappie Jigs in white, I was immediately getting slapped around by something which I thought had to be a huge Crappie. The wind was so bad I just could not hold station and decided to run up drift through the school, but it was just too hard to keep my light gear down. I ended up tying off to a down tree and that worked great as there were plenty of fish marks on the screen and they were interested, in fact they were viciously attacking the jig and finally I hooked up to a beautiful Rainbow, then another, and another, well I really don't like eatin em especially this time of year, kinda soft and colored up, but I lost count after 10 and just kept slamming and releasing them until I got one that was bright and fairly firm, thats the one in the photo. I was taking Crappie along with the Rainbow but I have a strict 10" rule for myself and most were under that so back they went. I was slamming fish so fast and often I went through 5 changes of skirts on my first jig, what fun. Well one of the boats must have been watching me and came over in close to get a looksee, there was a young lad and his dad and after a while seeing they were not getting anything I moved off the spot in hopes they would move in and sure enough they did, I watched em for the next 20 minutes or so and did not see much action so drifted on back and introduced myself and gave them a couple of Dons Dandy Crappie jigs and bid them good luck then headed for a couple spots that the wind was not so bad, hope they ended up having a great time as I could see from across the lake they spent most of the rest of the day there. Well this was just one of those days when the bite was on and never off, I think I must have caught well in excess a hundred Crappie but only managed to keep just one unlucky 10" fish. I ran through the gamit of colors but white seemed to be the best and probably second best was purple/white, I even pinched my barbs since the bite was so aggressive and it made for a quicker and cleaner release, plain jigging outfished the spinner jig today, the water temp seemed to hold around 58 degrees, leaves were in the air and on the water, the smell of autumn wafting in the breeze, ahhhh, I should have brought a 2nd beer.. Klahowya!

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