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Me and a friend went to Mantua on Saturday from around 1 til about 7 and caught 53 between us. So many tiny bass that were so easy to catch we finally moved on looking for bigger fish. A couple trout in the 18 inch range even a bass.
I caught 4 species of fish bass, crappie blue gill, rainbow.
On Sunday at Deer Creek we caught 16 between us and all were large healthy fish. We fished the East area near the Charelston bridge.
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[#0000FF]Glad you found some open water...and some fish.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]This time of year can be great if you hit it right.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]Looks like it is going to be a while yet for Strawberry.
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Mantua has crappie? Is this something new, can't say I've heard of them being caught there before and I know I've never caught any there?
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[#0000FF]Back in the late 70s there were crappies in Mantua. But with the droughts and poisonings the ecology has changed. I had not heard of any crappies in that lake in the past few years. However, DWR has been sprinkling them in other lakes...like Starvation. Maybe?
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[#0000FF]I'll shoot an inquiry to Chris Penne.
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I did not know that, sure would be interesting to find out a few survived or were planted in recent years. Do you remember, from those long ago days, if the crappie got much size to them in Mantua?
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[#0000FF]Mantua was one of the few waters open to ice fishing in the late 70s. I fished it with only a couple of things. My most successful was a 1.5" chartreuse twister on an 1/8 oz. hot red head...with no bait. I fished mostly for planter rainbows but did catch a few crappies on the same lures. The crappies were usually about 10 - 12 inches.
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[#0000FF]One spring I was going down to the lake after ice out, near the turnstile at the far eastern corner of the lake. As I approached where a small trickle spring was running in I could see several crappies of that size soaking up the sun in very shallow water. But they had "lip glue". No biters.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]There were some big bass and some big trout in there also. But whenever we hooked up on big fish they usually broke our light cheap lines on the ice.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]At one point they planted some Kamloops rainbows in there and for a couple of years the fly flingers had a ball. But the lake proved to get too warm for that species and they didn't make it.
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Wow, that's not too bad, guess if they have made a comeback or have been reintroduced, we can expect that same size at some point. Ira has told me the tail of those big trout that use to be in there, he said he use to catch them in that little stream that flowed out of the lake, before it became overgrown like it is today.
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[#0000FF]For bigger crappies I used to fish Holmes Creek Reservoir (Layton Pond/ Company Pond). Ice fishing with small kastmasters used to get quite a few nice largemouth and some crappies up to about 15 inches. Even got some walleyes out of there.
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For a smaller pond, it sure produced same nice sized fish, amazing it had walleye in it.
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with a crappie would be a green sunfish with their larger mouth and deeper body. We've seen some larger green sunfish in Mantua, but I would think an experienced angler would have a hard time calling a green sunfish a crappie due to the differences in coloration. We're going to be doing an electrofishing survey on Mantua in less than a month and will keep our eye out for any crappie. Thanks for the tip!
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