sport chalet fishing seminars

[EagleClaw85]

Are the sport chalet fishing seminars coming up going to have anything to do with crappie and panfishing?

[TheAsianGuy]

They mainly talk about trouts and basses a lot. Very little panfishes and cats, unless you start requesting it from the start, or during the questions and answers.

[etucker1959]

They mainly talk about trouts and basses a lot. Very little panfishes and cats, unless you start requesting it from the start, or during the questions and answers.

I recently attended a sports chalet seminar in Brea hosted by Marlon Meade. He had a lot to say about catching crappie in Irvine lake. If he doing the seminar it's worth going to.

[casting call]

Etucker, i was there too. I was the one who won that berkelely dough bait rod. :)

[TheAsianGuy]

Etucker, i was there too. I was the one who won that berkelely dough bait rod. :)

Nice! How was it? More info! More info! Give us the recap and info on the lecture.

[casting call]

Asian Guy, it was pretty informative. Hes on the Irvine lake pro team, so he talked mostly about Irvine lake. Showcased some new Berkely products (mouse tails, jigs, nanofil line, etc..and the rod i won :). He gave some crappie tips, drifting, lights, bobber technique, the best jigs to use for certain conditions, etc.

One technique Im experimenting with is the bobber. Ive never used a bobber in my life nor have I really targeted crappie prior to this year, so Im not very good yet. But this is Where you use a 7' + rod, tie a mini jig and wrap a bobber about the lenth of the rod up the mini jig, so if you have a 7foot rod, bobber is wrapped 7' from the jig. Cast out and very slow retrieve and an occasional flick of the rod. Oh, and line no heavier than 4lb.

Like Etucker said, its worth going when he has his seminars. Marlon is a walking Wikipedia of lake fishing.

[TheAsianGuy]

Thanks for the rig info! Wow..7 feet leader from the bobber to the jig? He must be talking about boat style fishing in a lake with a bottom of at least 10 feet of water. Casting 7 feet leader from shore is suicide, unless you're wide in the clear, like flyfishing.

Any more clue on the day, temp, conditions matching with rigs? Share the wisdom. It's an angler best arsenal.

[casting call]

Yeah, but i suppose as long as your are clear from trees, you could cast from shore. But you also want a fast action rod to really whip your jig out there.

Mostly afternoon drifting and putting out lights after sundown and waiting for a baitball to gather under your boat. When the wind begins to blow in the afternoon, at least for Irvine lake, you want to drift a jig over by the cliffs. Reason being is that the wind blows the bait fish over to the cliffs and get concentrated there.

As for matching conditions, white jigs in murkey water. He really pressed the 2" white berkely minnow. Id have to agree because I absolutely kill the crappie when I trolled a 3" berkely minnow from my inflatable pontoon.

How have you done on the crappie this year asian guy? Where do you fish?

[TheAsianGuy]

Sounds about right. I have yellow, white, orange, and red colored jigs in my arsenal. A few rooster tails on medium jigs for bobbing, and a few float lures on #4 and #6 hooks for rolling for top water actions by trouts, carps, basses, or any panfishes. I saw a crappie and gill competed for a small emerging dragon fly in the reeds about 2 inches out of the water while I was on my tube during calm morning. It dawned on me to slap a spider and a dragon fly foam lure out, casted them 5 feet into the high grass shore areas, left some slack line about 15 feet, and 3 minutes later WHAM! WHAM! the crappie and gill got a hold of my lines and swam two different directions with both rods having 6# test lines.

Crappies, not so good at Perris. Haven't caught any in BBL or the City Parks' lakes. Gills, plenty during the start of summer. Dying down a bit in the local water. But, the bites may have gone down, but the sizes are great. Averaging 10 inches, and about 2 every hour. Biggest one was a 14 incher. Didn't have my photo gears handy that day since wife took both my camera and phone during her girls day out thing.

[casting call]

Thats awsome. I need to register my 'toon cuz I just got a trolling motor for it (dont need reg at irvine!) so I can take it out to public lakes.
Last week I had a huge bait ball under the boat, metered some crappie, but i just got a few short bites.

[TheAsianGuy]

You know what, I tried the bait ball in hoping to attract some carps or cats. Before throwing my lines, I lowered a trolling line down, with a large bobber at the end. Three long leader separated about 4 feet part. 2 bait balls, and one huge crawler. Fishfinder detected a school of large fishes as I creeped out from the Lot 11/12 ramp towards the southeast area at Perris. Multiple nibbles, but no solid bites. I guess my hooks were too small inside the bait balls, and the fishes weren't greedy enough. However, a greedy gill jumped the line on the crawler, swallowing that 5 inch segment whole. What a freaking pig! That was the 14 incher I was talking about. Didn't care too much for photos, so, went home, prep for dinner, and made her and the kids' favorite fish taco style. Plenty of meat on the 14".

[casting call]

Way to go on that bg. I just remembered another tip Marlon mentioned that might be worth trying out:

Your index finger on the hand holding your rod, extend your index finger so that its in the path of your line as you are reeling in. Now, when you are reeling in, make sure that as the spool makes its rotation, the line brushes up against your finger. As the line "snaps" off your finger and back into the normal pattern of the spool, this causes a break in the retrieve pattern and is supposed to cause your jig to simulate an injured bait fish.

[TheAsianGuy]

You know what, there is an add-on tool for your rod to do that!

http://www.linedancerinc.com/

I normally use my middle finger, not index, and place my index finger on the rod to sense how much twitching soft bait is twitching in the water. That allows me to move my middle finger up or down the rod to increase or decrease the amount of twitching during reeling in the lines.