drumking, chickamauga, crappie, 2/7/09, Hal

[FishNews]

Hal and I were so blessed to be able to fish the February crappie tx today. Thanks to a great friend, Mark Camp, for loaning me his boat to fish out of since mine is still in the shop waiting on parts to get here. Hal and I were fortunate enough to win the tournament with a 7 fish limit that weighed 9 lbs 4 oz. We missed big fish by 2 ozs again to Dixie Boy. Two txs in a row that we missed big fish to Dixie Boy by 2 ozs each time.<br /><br />It was a tough bite today for most of us. With the reports that came in yesterday and most weren't catching any crappie, I knew that we had our work cut out for us. But I had confidence that the fish that I had located a couple of weeks ago would still be there and it was a matter of patiently waiting until they went on the morning bite. We caught a couple of stragglers early and had only 4 keepers by 9:45 when the fish suddenly turned on. We moved quickly to the spot where we had been catching the bigger fish and got lucky. We then caught most of our fish by 10:30. We landed 28 crappie, 2 spotted bass and 2 bluegills. It was fun culling down to the 7 fish limit that is set for the tournaments.<br /><br />We caught our fish mainly on pearl ringer stingers/chartreuse dipped tails, a couple on panfish assassins, albino shad/chartreuse tail, crystal panfish assassin/chartreuse tail, and a few on BG shads. We fished docks in the river in 19 feet of water. Most of the fish were no deeper than 8 feet and it took dead sticking to get most of them to hit. If the jig was moving very fast, no strikes. Many bites were so subtle that it was hard to tell when a fish had taken the bait. The spotted bass were perfect eating size, but we let them go.<br /><br />Congratulations to all the guys who fished in the tournament. I sorry that the bite wasn't better for all of us. I had a great time fellowshipping with all of you guys. I really want to fish with many of you this year. Hope to see you all at the next tx. Doc, sorry that I only took 1 pic. Can you believe that we all stood around at the weigh in with the camera in my pocket and I didn't even think of a taking a pic until it was all over. My bad.