Lake Blackshear Fishing Report December 2016

Blackshear: Level: Down 3 1/2 feet until drawdown is over on Dec. 15. Temp: 60-63 degrees. Clarity: A perfect color.

Crappie: Rusty Parker reports, “It should be real tough to do a fishing report and not have a boat, but I have truly been blessed with a lot of my friends who have invited me to go fishing with them. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a boat by spring. Lake Blackshear has a scheduled drawdown every other year, and this year is a drawdown year. They began lowering the water on Nov. 1, and it will stay down 3 1/2 feet until Dec. 15. It’s dependent on the rain on how fast the lake goes back up, so low water may be here for a while. With my experience, I have always had great luck with crappie fishing this time of the year, especially during the drawdown. The crappie bite is excellent now. Catching a limit should be easy for most of you. A friend of mine and his wife went last week and caught several crappie but kept only 25 of them. His wife caught one that was 4 ounces short of 2 pounds. I saw these fish, and just about all of them were longer than 10 inches. The next day he and I went fishing, and we caught 17 nice slabs. So there are several being caught, and most of them are nice-sized slabs. Most that I have caught have been by tightlining minnows in deep-water channel ledges. When tightlining, just make sure you fish at varying depths until you find what average depth they are at. I also have been able to shoot jigs under the main railroad trestle close to the Highway 280 bridge and catch several slabs. The main color combos they seem to hit for me is chartreuse/chartreuse/chartreuse and the chartreuse/pink/chartreuse. A couple of great spots to try is the trestle, the channel ledge at Highway 280 bridge and on the east side of the island just before you get to Spring Creek. I do want to warn everyone to be extra careful during the drawdown because of floating debris and all of those stumps. I will not be fishing for a few days because my wife and I are waiting on test results from my last doctor visit. Right now it’s not good news, so I am asking all of you to please pray for me. May your catch be large and plentiful, and remember that Jesus loves you.”