20161020—Nice B.Gills and B.CrappieS taken Long-Casting jigs near the surface over the deep basins All CPR’ed

20161020—we had a short time to fish before sunset so we had to make the most efficient use of our time… we selected a small natural lake where there were larger concentrations of avg sized fish. B.Gills and B.Crappie were the main target species and long-casting the UL swim jigs were the first choice method.

We decided to try locating the fish in the deep basins first and found schools of fish in 20-25’/30’ FOW with surf temps at 57°. Long-casting and vertical jigging could not entice a fish. We headed shallower hitting the deep drop-off breaks, deep weed lines, shallow weed lines and shoreline breaks. One lone small Y.Perch was the best showing for the effort. We were getting a beating 2 trips in a row and the panfish were winning. 45 mins with one fish to show was pitiful.

One other boat was out on the small lake and from a distance we could tell they were bringing in B.Gills at a very slow pace. Judging from their position I estimated they were on the deep break where it abruptly drops to 25’ FOW from 10’. After a short discussion with the other boat we discovered they were vertically jigging wax worms on tungsten jigs.

One of the last times fishing this lake we noticed large concentrated schools of panfish just under the surface with dorsal fins just breaking the plane. As the wind was dying down we started spotting the large schools and proceeded to Long-Cast the tiny jigs past the schools near the surface and began tagging the B.Gills and B.Crappie in a fast and steady pace. We moved with the trolling motor with the schools of fish as they dimpled the surface with their fins. What a great pattern this turned out to be!

We continued tagging fish up till sunset with a nice double tag of 12” B.Crappie on synced casts.