2/19/05; Lake Livingston - East Texas Crappie Club Tournament

Shannon and I signed up for the February East Texas Crappie Club (E.T.C.C.) tournament held on lake Livingston and hosted at Galloway's Marina located near Trinity, TX.

Unsure of what to expect since this was only my second time to be on the Lake and Shannon's first, we were very grateful that some of the club members offered some advice on where the had fished before with some success. They advised us to fish in Caney Creek which was just a short ride from the marina to the Northeast. Since the boat lane was a bit tricky if you had never been that route before, Ron even offered to lead us to the mouth of the creek which we accepted quickly.

Once in the mouth of the creek, we decided to start fishing there and not impose any further, allowing Ron to go up the creek without us. That decision proved that our luck had not run out yet. Just a few minutes after getting the spider rig setup and deployed we ran across some submerged structure within 15 feet of the bank in 7 feet of water. The structure stuck up only a foot or two from the bottom but, it held a concentration of crappie. Most were small but we were able to fill our 7 fish weigh in limit before 9:00.

Due to the fact that there was a large amount of boat traffic, and they were all going past where we were fishing, around 9:30 or 10:00 we decided to make a move since we weren't catching large fish to see if we could do better up the creek. So, there must be better fishing right? Wrong. We used the trolling motor and spent the next 3 hours looking for better fish and only caught one additional crappie which was smaller than the ones we already had in the livewell. That is until we found a log jam on the end of a long slow outside bend of the creek. There we found fish in the same 7 foot depth level holding close to the sunken timber. We were able to replace 4 of our fish from that location. Although some of the fish caught at this location were larger, we just couldn't seem to keep them biting. After spending another hour there without another fish we decided to move back to the original spot to try it again. Once there, we were able to replace 3 more fish. Now all of the fish to weigh were at least over a pound in weight.

We ended up in second place out of 12 teams. We had a total 7 fish weighting 9.26 pounds, which was a much better stringer of fish than I ever imagined we would get. With a wink of the eye, we were told that we weren't going to get any help next time.

Win or lose, the E.T.C.C. is comprised of some very nice people and is always a pleasure to fish with them. Call Glenn Tate if you are interested in joining or would like any information of the monthly tournaments. His number is 936-594-1887 and he will gladly fill you in with the details. The March club tournament will be held on Houston County Lake near Crockett, Texas.

Saturday, 2/05/05; Conroe

I fished out of Shannon's boat today. Roger and I met Shannon at his house around 7 am and headed to the Stubblefield area. We went all the way past the Stubblefield bridge and tried the oxbow area a bit with poor results. We caught 2 crappie and a white bass. The water was cold from the recent front and the rain that came with it, 43 degrees in the Stubblefield area. On he way out, we went into Stubblefield lake, someone has cut the laydown away that was covering the cut from the bridge to the lake down since the last time I was up there.



By this time it was well after noon and we went to Fisherman's Cove at Stowaway Marina for a burger.

From 2 until 5 we fished deep structure in 32 feet of water in the main lake and that is where we found some fish. They weren't large fish but, they were there in numbers.



Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I didn't catch any crappie, they were all caught by Shannon and Roger. I was jigging with a single pole in the back and they were running a spider rig in the front.