Water temps are around 76 and gin clear. Lake Level is at summer pool. I have been just crappie fishing for a week now and catching close to a hundred a day. It takes that many due to the small fish being so numerous. We have still been able to get three and even four limits each day by moving around a bunch. Two or three over ten inches and twenty under ten per spot so we move every 10-15 minutes. This is why a guide is very helpful plenty of spots, no time wasted.

We are tight lining minnows on my 14ft. BnM Diamond Series rods. Just easier to match the precise depth and location of the larger fish on a piece of structure. When the wind is down we are also using my 8ft. Norm’s rods and a slip bobber rig. I buy between 10-15 dozen minnows a day and Chip gives me a bunch so I have way more than that.

My handmade 1/8oz. casting sinker tied above an Andy Roberts 1/32oz. white hair jig has also been very good as well as a Brushpile Hammer in many clear water colors. For this I want standing timber or stumps because we are pendulum fishing and watching it fall on Livescope.

As we build a thermocline this bite will do nothing but get better. They bunch up more and settle in at 15-17ft. Right now our best bite is 20ft. or deeper and you must move a lot. About mid July we get an algae bloom. The whole lake will get a green scum like seeds. As this grows it sinks and settles in down at the thermocline. All the baitfish in the lake feed on this and follow it. Right now we have yet another shad spawn and the white bass and crappie are following them around and they are at all depths. The whites are busting on them all over the south end of the lake so I see that they are about 2in. long.

As for the white bass right now they are chasing the small shad and busting them to the surface. This only lasts for maybe twenty seconds. If they are close I will toss a minnow into them and get a couple. I am waiting until they get on the sides of drop-offs in 20ft. or so and this won’t happen until we get the thermocline or surface temps climb up into the mid 80’s. Hopefully in about three weeks. I have the rods with me and check points but so far they just aren’t there. Late July or August and September if you want to come chase white bass with me. We get a ton when it gets right and they are big. Give me a call at 217-840-1221 or go to my website for available dates. Still have plenty of great crappie trips open and white bass is wide open.

Steve Welch
Latest posts by Steve Welch (see all)