One team that did that was Dan and Sue Dannenmueller of Alabama. Where the shad go, the fish go… Dan and Sue Dannenmueller The fishermen that caught those fish in the open were fishing around big balls of shad. By now, some of the areas that were hard to get into from the river may be out of reach of anglers without pulling a boat through the mud… Fish were caught around the edges of the timber in 3-4 feet of water and in 8-10 feet of water totally out away from structure. They became even more important as the river continued to drop. First of all, most of the good fish were caught in bayous and lakes off the main river channel. We’ll leave you with a few other little tidbits from the weekend.
But they still get to see what’s going on live on their scopes. Sometimes like this weekend when they get a lot of pressure, the fish become ultra spooky and anglers have to cast lures like Road Runners past the fish and retrieve them slowly back to the fish to catch them. įishermen can now virtually “see” underwater and not only find schools of fish, but pinpoint the bigger ones. Heath Rogers and Lance Bilberry finished fifth with 23.35 pounds Dusty McGehee and John Harrison finished eight with 22.48 Terry Richard and Kent Williams finished 17th with 19.78 and Neal Pace and Chad Callender were 28th with 16.76. A lot of other anglers from here did well, too. Who would have ever thought that here, in the late-middle of July, it would take 14 crappie weighing 27 pounds to win a tournament? That honor went to local anglers Jason Thomas and Shannon Porter. Or they fished a jig in the thick tops along the river.īut speaking of radar - the new electronics available to crappie fishermen today have opened up a whole new world of possibility. And the ones that did trolled around the shallow backwater lakes with a long pole and a lone jig. Dusty McGehee from Downsville and John Harrison from Jonesboro landed the Slab of the tourney - a 2.28 pounder.įor decades, summer crappie fishing on the Ouachita pretty much flew under the radar.