Crappie fishing in crappy weather

After seeing the weather forecast last night, I decided to stay home this morning. At least that was the plan… I was wide awake before 5 and bored out of my mind by 7. I got my stuff together and was on the ice by 8.

By the time I pulled the shanty out on to the cove, the snow had stopped and a heavy sleet was falling. I went light today, no tip ups… Just 3 rods, flasher and hand auger along with a a Frabill Recon. I was able to reopen some old holes with minimum effort.   It was a slow start, I was beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time. I  don’t normally fish in a shanty, I like to move around too much but I had a couple of hot holes that kept me in place for a while. It was nice in the Recon. No wind, no sleet, no gloves… The first couple of fish were small perch, then the bluegill moved in heavy and then the crappie. The crappie moved in all at once and each one got a bit bigger. I dropped a big one at the hole when the lure got stuck on the bottom of the hole. Before I could reel down and stick my tip down, she was gone. It would have been a heck of a fish for the river… Oh well.

The sleet had slowed down just before 10 so I left the comfort of the Recon and roamed around opening my old holes. There weren’t as many fish out in the deeper water, but the crappie were of decent size. I had close to a dozen in total. I didn’t stay much longer, as it had finally started to rain. It was instantly freezing to everything and made it very hard to read the screen on the flasher. I was off the ice by 10:30. Not a bad couple of hours on a day I wasn’t planning to fish…