WINTER CRAPPIES

[TubeDude]

Hey, Gang. This is the time of year to start looking for crappies schooled up in deeper water. They will usually be stratified somewhere between the bottom and the top. Find them and then send down a small jig. Don't hop it around too much. Sometimes they will take it while it is dead still. An old ice fishing trick is to tip a small jig with a piece of meal worm or wax worm. Of course a small minnow or piece of fish meat works too.

The fish in the attached Pic came from Patagonia, on a float tubing trip just after the first of the year. The water was cold, but a couple of 3# crappies will warm you up.

Both Roosevelt and Bartlett can offer some good cold weather crappie fishing, if you know the secrets and don't mind a touch of chilly weather. There are also some decent crappies in Saguaro around the docks, if you can get to them before all the kids and dimbulbs start stomping all over them. Once the noise begins the fish quit.
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[OneWhoFishes]

When my wife and I lived out thier we used to fish just bellow the horse shoe resivior for crappies. Is the bight still good there? Last I heard the resivior was down to a [size 1]stream[/size] and water flow beneath the dam minimal. Is it worth the drive from cali anymore?
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[TubeDude]

[cool] Got some bad news and some really bad news for you, Eric. Horeeshoe Reservoir, and the washout pool below the dam, have been favorite spots of mine for years. As you remember, lots of nice crappies and some good cats too. Even caught a few decent bass below the dam. Today, the lake is dry. It hasn't had any water in it for over three years. That means that the pool below it is often just a semi stagnant puddle with only a few carp and an occasional catfish with wanderlust that has fought it's way up from Bartlett during a rare runoff after a rare rain.

The last good rain year we had was 1997. Horseshoe was full in 1998 and the crappies and other species were plentiful and fat. I loved it for float tube fishing because of the restrictions on boat sizes and no personal water craft allowed. I was often the only angler on the lake.

Everything has gone downhill since then. As the drought settled in, the lake kept dropping. I believe it was February of 99 that the remaining pool in the main lake got so low that the fish were in danger of dying from overcrowding and lack of food and oxygen. Officials opened the valves and flushed the lake into the basin below.

The word quickly got out and for several weeks the basin was a madhouse of harvesting fishermen...catching and keeping everything they could catch. At first there were lots of big crappies, bass and catfish...and millions of carp. It quickly degenerated to handsized crappies, six inch bass and tiddler channel cats. Since then, carp fishermen have been about the only ones to find any action.

What is almost as bad is the Arizona Fiah & Game's decision to manage the lake for "native species" when normal water conditions return. That means that there will only be humpback suckers and Colorado pikeminnows ...neither of which can be fished for...and not much of an angling prize anyway. No more bass, crappie or catfish for serious anglers. In a state where there are few waters where float tubers can find refuge from the "power squadrons", that is a tragedy.

Almost as nutty as their plan to remove trout from the Colorado River, and grind them up for fertilizer for the Hualapai Indians' gardens. But, that is another issue. Sorry about that.

The crappie fishing at Lake Pleasant has also gone down the toilet since they raised the dam. Each year they pump in Colorado River water through the winter months to fill the lake, and then drain it out to irrigate our worthless cotton crops through the summer. Not only has this resulted in a complete denuding of all the trees and structure for crappies, but the lake drops five or six feet a week during spawning time for bass and bluegill too. Another of my formerly favorite lakes is a shadow of it's former glory.

The good news is that Alamo Lake...currently at 7% of capacity (due to the drought)...has emerged as a good crappie lake and doesn't get too much pressure, since it is about three hours from Phoenix. More good news, for you, is that it is between Phoenix and California, ao it is relatively closer.

What part of California do you live in Eric? There are quite a few good crappie waters in that state. I know because I probably lived in almost every major population area of California, from San Diego to Sacramento for over twenty years. If you do some aggressive research, you can probably find something closer to home. But, if you just like fishing in the Grand Canyon State, stay in touch and I can probably keep you up to date before any trip you plan to make.
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[AZBassman]

Tube dude,

Dont even try and tell me that that handsome devil holding those crappies in that picture are you. ha ha

Anyway I have a fishing trip planned for Saguaro on Wednesday morning (playing hookie from work) Me and a couple of my buddies are going out and trying a new jig I made/poured to be worked like a spoon (this just could of been another one of my dumb ideas) but hell the new bait looks good, and if I was a fish I would east nothing but this new bait haha. Anyway I will be out there on my spoon spots for most of the morning to see if I just created a MUST HAVE biat for the tackle box. So look for a report on Thursday
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[TubeDude]

[cool] Okay, I actually paid Robert Redford to sub for me. Don't he look cute in that funny set of fisherman's pantyhose? Then again, some of us want justice and others want mercy. I noticed in the pic you sent of that baby bass that you had your face cropped out. Either that or you need a new photographer.

One of my best salmon pics from years ago was taken by my daughter. She cut the two salmon off about half way down and has a whole lot of space above my head. That's one of the neat things about digital cameras. You can see the pic before it's too late to take another one if you blew the first shot.

So, you're gonna play a little fish hooky, huh? I won't tell if you don't. Been known to engage in that little game myself. Hope the weather cooperates and that you don't play the wind-surfing game again.

We got to get together if you are a lure crafter. I have about twenty jig molds. I make lures, tie flies, build rods and all kinds of kinky stuff. I am just putting glitter paint finish and eyes on some new big Roadrunner jig heads I am going to make into vertical jigging stuff for the Saguaro sweethearts. I catch enough five to seven pounders on the small models I fish for yellows and walleyes that I figure some bigger ones oughtta work too. I started tieing in some rainbow colors over or with white this year and it has been killing fish wherever shad are a part of the menu.

I'll scan a couple of pics and send them over when I finish my next batch. I'd like to get a look at your new creations too...but only if they work. I got enough boxes full of experiments that didn't work.

In the meantime, I'll wait with bait on my breath for your report. Lotsa luck.
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