Dad needed some fish for a fish fry that was coming up so we set out to find some Sandbass early because thats more of a sure thing than Crappie. Well the Sandbass we found were not all that big so we broke out the Crappie gear and went hunting for some of them. We found some really big ones but nothing in huge numbers. Pretty much everything we caught were 12"+ keepers but not any huge schools of them like we were looking for. We probably had about 35 really good ones but decided to try another spot looking for better numbers.

We made about a 5 mile run and found huge numbers of Crappie but almost all were under 10". I dropped down on a brush pile in about 14' of water just like I had done about 500 times already that day and felt a little "tick" so I set the hook. At first I thought it was a really good Crappie because it was not fighting all that hard, then I saw it under the surface and told Dad it was about a 6 pound Bass and to get the net. By that time the fish figured out it was hooked and came unglued. She started ripping line off my little 4'6" ultra lite crappie rod and reel at lighting speeds. I only had 6 pound test and a little light wire hook so all I could do is hang on and enjoy the ride. I was trying to pull her out to more open water when she jumped the first time and I told Dad that she was way bigger than 6 pounds. Then next jump she made was probably 25 yards from the boat and I look at Dad and told him she is a double digit for sure. One more jump closer to the boat and he believed me. After what seemed like an hour she was coming up close to the boat so I said "Get ready here she comes". I saw my leader knot for my Flourocarbon and said we had about 5' and she would be in sight. She came clean out of the water and jumped plumb over the net and I about had a heart attack. How she did not break my line on that last run I will never know but it held up and we got the net under her.

I knew when I lipped her she was not my biggest but knew she would be darn close. She came in at 10-2 making her my first double digit since 2009. I wish I would have measured her but pretty sure she was around the 26" mark. Long and healthy but far from skinny. I was just talking early last week to someone telling them I was due for another big one any day now. Anyway I stuck her in the livewell and we got the phones out to take some pics and then I let her go back to where she came from.

After that we couldnt focus on the Crappie anymore. We had already caught several other Bass at that point on Crappie jigs so we decided to put the sissy rods away and dig out the Bass stuff. We made a short run and over the next 90 minutes it was a slug fest! We put 2 more in the boat between 5-6 pounds and countless others along with breaking off a good one I didnt get to see that got me wrapped up. Our best 5 today would have topped 26 pounds easy.

We ended up bringing home 40 fish almost all Crappie and one nice Blue Cat. Even had one black nose Crappie pushing the 14" mark. Incredible day to say the least!

Nice fish JCB! Looks and sounds like an awesome day.

What a toad!

Nice day for sure!

Heck of a day congrats What lake?

Great day on the water for sure!!

Awesome , congratulations

What a day! Congrats to you and your dad.

NICE !!!

how did it taste?

Another great day! Nice haul.

Thanks everyone. Still cant believe I was able to land her on that little rod. I have hooked giant Carp, Buffalo, Catfish, Hybrids, and some other decent Bass on that thing and 95% of the time it did not end well. This is the one time it did though.

Deer whisperer during the Fall and Fish whisperer during the spring

That's the cool thing about crappie fishing, you'll get an assortment of fish all hungry for the same thing. We've caught sand bass, large mouth bass, drum, gar, channel cat, and crappy all in one spot!

that's awesome; we go into some spawning crappie on a semi-submerged brush pile a few weeks ago and I hooked on to what I think was a 6+ lb bass on the short glimpse I got of it. Unfortunately on that light tackle it got back down into the brush and I couldn't get it out. Glad you were able to land it on that light tackle!

Nice bag of fish