Lake Hodges Kayaking June 2023

[blackcloud9]

My report over the last couple of Sundays at Lake Hodges fishing for crappie - it's been nothing short of spectacular from the kayak with the ultralight gear. I see a lot of guys bringing home limits(25) but, I end up releasing most of my fish and keeping a handful of the nicer models for various Baked Crappie recipes. I caught more than 20 crappie both days that I fished.

A kayak-sized Garmin livescope unit allows me to target schools of crappie when I'm not too distracted by all the big catfish and carp on my screen.

I used to simply troll jigs or roadrunners around in open water and do pretty well on these fish. This new 'targeted' type of fishing using a Garmin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vaH8t_d3VA allows me to pedal over empty water until I locate the crappie, flip a small jig out and drop it to the right depth above the fish and give it a twitch. I get to really feel the strike and set the hook on them, as they literally charge up to attack it, sometimes multiple times.

For me, it's truly 5x more fun than trolling around in circles to watch a rod bend.

Catfish, carp and crappie on Livescope - which is which? I'm getting better at telling by their movements and profiles.

Smaller one released after photo but shows the kayak fishing setup.

Here's me, fishing for bass and somehow snagged a crappie.

Stringer of 9 on Day 1

Disclaimer: Livescope has a learning curve. Your vessel location, transducer direction and jig positioning to target fish is not super intuitive in open water especially in wind. It has been a really fun challenge to get to this point of effective crappie targeting after a full year. Always learning!!

[Stringbean]

Way to go, those are some beautiful fish.
With those new electronics there's no slowing you down.,

[blackcloud9]

Way to go, those are some beautiful fish.
With those new electronics there's no slowing you down.,

LOL, making up for three skunk days from shore at Sweetwater earlier this year in addition to two full days kayaking at Sutherland where I only caught one crappie each day! 2023 Dues are paid in full. LMK if you want some tips if ur interested in the crappie hunt.