Nice! I was having good luck with smallmouth near the Olentangy and scioto confluence. Casting into deeper spots in the riffles and near structure. Also with a white inline spinner. Any tips on how to target the crappie? I’d love to catch a river crappie.

 

I mostly fish Hoover and Alum Creek for crappie. But, there are a couple spots on the Scioto that are near our work sites where I know crappie hang out. Look for slack water with structure usually trees or boat docks. I'm fishing up River between the O'Shaughnessy Dam and Home Road usually. Good luck. I did catch a little Smallmouth yesterday that was hanging out with the crappie.

 

I'll also add... if you feel like there might be fish around and they are not biting on the spinner, a gulp minnow or Bobby Garland on a small jigunder a float can often get them to bite. I'll cast it out and slowly pull the float 6 to 8" at a time, let the jig settle underneath and then repeat.

 

 

Good job! Im gonna start getting after them hard in about two weeks. This is my favorite time of the year to fish for them.

 

More bass than crappie today. Fishing on work breaks I don't really care though. I'm not keeping any. If someone's fishing nearby, I may give them the keepers ( if I catch any.)

 

Decided to hit Alum north pool yesterday as I hadn't been there for a while and figured with the lack of rain the water would be fairly clear. Turned out the visibility wasn't too bad, for Alum's north pool, but not as good as I had anticipated. It had also been a while since I had used minnows, so I decided to stop at Cheshire Market and get a couple dozen Bass minnows, and a few Roadrunners. When the guy handed me the bucket of minnows, it looked like he had been very generous with his count. Proceeded to the Howard Rd ramp and got the canoe on the water about 3PM and headed south, I spotted a downed tree floating in the middle and figured I would try around it first, but there was a guy in a kayak heading in that direction too. He got there before me and I saw he was planning on fishing around it, so I remarked to him that it looked like he had the same idea I had and that I would leave it to him. I moved on and found another likely spot, tossed out a little white roadrunner and on the second cast caught a 10" Crappie. I don't know exactly what happened on my third cast, but I lost the roadrunner and the little clip holding it onto the leader. The leaded had a clean break, so I know the knot hadn't come undone. That was the only white one I had, so I tried chartreuse with no luck. I decided I really needed to use up some minnows and switched, only to immediately get snagged. After getting the line off the snag, I moved to a couple other spots and caught a few more, and of course, an 18" channel. Called it a day about dark and brought home 4 nice Crappie with the first being the smallest and the largest being 12". Water temp in the north pool varied, depending on location, from low 70's to high 70's. Of course, when I got home, I had to quickly rig up something to keep all those minnows alive in, since I know my 10 gal aquarium wouldn't be large enough. Luckily I had plenty of rain water in the rain barrels to put in a tub. Turned out that even after fishing, I still have over 4 dozen minnows left

 

Great report Codger, glad you were able to get some fish!

 

Ha, really just a long winded excuse to show my quickly rigged minnow tank

 

It's been an off and on bite down here. Did manage a 10", 11.5 and 2 slightly over 12" last night. We only caught a couple of shorts. Last Saturday we caught several but only a couple over 9". Casting and swimming small jigs right off the bottom or drop shots with Itty Bits. They wouldn't pay much attention to minnows.

 

Daughter and I got 41 total yesterday at Hoover, including one good sized Blue, a small White Bass and a small Perch. The rest were Crappie, mostly shorts, but a few keeper sized. All on minnows.

 

Dang man! I need to go fishing with you!

 

I had a good outing at the Scioto again yesterday. I'm surprised they were still there with the heat and the water was pretty shallow. there were a bunch of Shad around. they were schooling them up and chasing them to the top. I was just casting right into the middle and hooking up every other cast. Nothing really big but it was a lot of fun!

 

Stopped by Hoover on my way home. Changed up to a gulp on a jig under a float to slow it down a bit. The change worked well. Caught 10 or 12 fish with several keepers. Gave them to the guy fishing next to me. He had a nice mess when I left. I might hit it in the kayak this weekend.