Oxbow crappie fishing is tough, anglers report.
Fishing conditions could not be more ideal in the Delta. The temperatures have fallen to a more comfortable autumn range. Passing fronts are few and far between.
Crappie fishermen, who have been waiting for this kind of weather, are hitting the water in good numbers, anxious to fill their freezers with plenty of fillets before their thoughts to deer hunting.
Great, right?“Man, it is anything but that,” said David Thornton of Eagle Lake, one of the state’s best perch jerkers. “For the life of me, I can’t figure it out but the fishing is tough — real tough.
“Usually, we hammer them in October at Eagle Lake and at the oxbows like Chotard and Albermarle, but since last Friday we’re lucky if we can get seven or eight good keepers a day.”
Thornton, a member of the Magnolia Crappie Club, keeps a good statewide track of fishing by networking with other MCC members. Only one spot seems to be productive.
“I’ve talked to a dozen or more people, and the only good report I’ve gotten is at Grenada Lake,” Thornton said. “They are hammering up there pretty good on a regular basis, both by trolling and jigging structure.”
The club’s October tournament was held on Wolf Lake last weekend, another popular fall crappie lake. Thornton said the bite was real good on Friday, the final day of practice, and then fell off on tournament day.
“I think everybody was catching a lot of good, fat ones in practice but on tournament day, it shut off,” he said, adding that he doubts overfishing during practice contributed to the fall off. “No, couldn’t be that because the same thing happened everywhere else that we’ve been fishing and catching fish. I’m talking about here at Eagle, Chotard and Albermarle, over there at Barnett Reservoir and everywhere else except what I hear at Grenada.
“It fell off overnight. I wish I knew what happened, because it really seems like the big fish just disappeared. Oh, you can go out and catch a lot of fish, like on my lake here at Eagle, but you just can’t find any decent fish. Everything is small. My partner found the same thing at Chotard — just small fish.”
Fall is a time of transition, but few fishermen have ever seen anything this dramatic. At least nobody we can find.
“I was expecting fish to move and follow the shad, but, man, this is ridiculous,” said Jackson’s Tommy Henson, who struggled this week at Barnett Reservoir. “I take vacation time every year in October just to crappie fish, and I always catch big fish on the edge of creeks and even the river channel as they follow shad that are migrating due to cooler water temperatures.
“Well the water is cooling, (and) I found the shad moving but the crappie just weren’t there. If they were, they weren’t biting. I was catching a boatload of 7- and 8-inch fish, but I bet my three-day average was 10 decent fish. And, that’s after I lowered my definition of decent fish.”
At Grenada, Clyde Williams of Greenwood said it was exactly the opposite for him.
“I had been struggling to find good fish until about 10 days or two weeks ago, and then just like flipping a switch, the big fish started biting,” Williams said. “I have caught them trolling — that’s with jigs and minnows and not crankbaits like a lot of folks do — and I have caught them jigging timber. I’ve caught my best fishing jigging shallow, like under eight feet.”
That report sparked an idea for Thornton.
“Next time I go over there to Chotard and Albermarle, which are usually so productive in October, I’m going to start in water 5 feet deep and work my way to the bank until I find them,” he said. “I bet that may be the ticket. Nobody is fishing shallow, and nobody is catching fish. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
“And even if it doesn’t work, one thing it will do is give us a break from the gar. In all my years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the gar be such a problem as they are in those oxbows this year, and all of them are out there in the deep water where we normally troll and catch our big crappie.
“Maybe they pushed the crappie shallow. Check with me next week, I’ll tell you for sure, cause I’m going to find out.”
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