Family businesses
Thanks to everyone supporting KGVE and the family's businesses around the lake: Williams Guide Service, Grand Glass Cleaning, Luck E Strike, Patricia's OnGrandTime.com, and her VIP Spa on Monkey Island. When you visit a local dealer carrying Luck E Strike products, tell them you heard Jeff on the fishing report. It lets them know you want those products.
Crappie
Jeff Crappie fished around Paradise Point over the weekend. There were lots of boats around the mouth of Elk River and up toward Three Fingers, but everyone was respectful. He caught nice Crappie, 12 to 14 inches, by finding brush piles with forward-facing LiveScope, backing off and casting. His bait was an old Luck E Strike product he pushed to get back in stock, the cable guard (wire guard) weedless ball jig head. It's coming this year in 1/32, 1/16, 1/8 and 1/4 oz, likely the biggest assortment of weedless ball heads around. He threw a 1/4 oz natural head with a 2½-inch Swimming Minnow or 2½-inch Lucky Bug and crawled it slowly through the brush. No jig head is bulletproof, but you'll be surprised how deep you can get it and how often you get it back. Yesterday Jeff went out with Haydn after a trip cancellation, fishing Haydn's brush piles around Sailboat Bridge and Shangri-La. On the down-view LiveScope the Crappie were absolutely buried in the wood. They caught a couple of limits, and the Traeger-smoked Crappie last night was fantastic.
Year classes
They caught some short fish (7 to 8 inches) for the first time in a while, which is good to see. A few years ago it was all 9½-inch fish. Now there's a bumper crop of 10- to 13-inch fish dominating the structure, so the shorties are a welcome sign.
Shad / White Bass
There are a bajillion shad fry absolutely everywhere, so anybody who says there are no shad in the lake doesn't know what they're talking about. Jeff wishes more Hybrid Stripers were stocked to help control them. White Bass are surfacing in lots of places chasing shad fry in the waves. Mornings and evenings, find wind blowing into a bank where zooplankton gathers, and you'll often find shad with predators feeding on them.
Trolling / Bass
People are catching fish trolling Rooster Tails, and some folks who bought Crappie Magic crankbaits at the Grove Walmart trolled up Crappie and White Bass. You can troll Swimming Minnows too. Tony Coatney has had some really nice hauls of White Bass on guide trips, with a few Stripers mixed in. Jeff didn't hear much about Black Bass this week, since he was at the ICAST tackle show in Orlando. White Bass and Crappie fishing is fantastic, and the water is clear and warm.
Weekday tip
During the week there are hardly any boats, just a couple of Wave Runners and a boat by Fifth and Boston as Jeff records. If you want to get away and catch some fish, come to Grand Lake on a weekday.