July and August bring on the dog fays of summer which usually mean air conditioners running at full speed, and trying to stay tucked away in the comfortable shade. One way to escape this heat of summer is to pack up the family and head down to Murray Kentucky for a crappie catching fun time.
Just east of Murray on famous Kentucky Lake is an affordable lakeside resort called Lynhurst Resort. It is designed for both family recreation and the serious fisherman. It's actually located on the Blood River which is an arm off the southren side of Kentucky Lake just east of Murray in Kentucky's Calloway County. It runs approximately one mile wide and about three miles long. This river is an ideal place to vacation and catch huge crappie, catish and stripers. A nice asset to the resort and the river is that it is protected and dosen't get the nasty rollers that the main Kentucky Lake body does. Therefore it's fishable even in bad weather.
Our trip was lucky enough to see only one day of rain with the rest beautiful sunshine. Fishing was terrific and the folks at Lynhurst were extremely accommodating. They have a complete bait & tackle shop, cabins, condos or apartment units with kitchenettes throughout, a pool and game room for the kids, and even a restaurant/snack shop for quick meals, all tucked neatly along the water with rolling hills and woodlands.
We met up with John Morgan of John Morgan's Guide Service for one of the afternoons who showed us some ideal places to fish. Tub jigs and Road Runners were the bait of choice as the deeper structure. We trolled slowly acrss the channel in about 15 to 20 feet of water with John's "Spider rig" system, which is a form of "carepolling", where a series of five 10ft rods were mounted off the front of his boat. The rods were ultralight, spooled with six to eight pound test and required no reeling once the required depth was determined. When you had a strike all you had to do was lift the rod tip and unhook the fish. Upon doing so, the bait went right back to the same fishing depth for no lost fishing time. The only problem we had was when two or more rods got strikes at the same time causing a little chaos, which really was not a problem as far as I was concerned.
Numerous Crappie over a pound each were caught which John considered average. And while our largest was 1 pound 15 ounces, one came into camp measuring 17 inches weughing in at 2.5 pounds. We also managed a little bass fishing and had some luck boating a few 2-3 pound fish. Casting spinerbait and plastic worms towards brushpiles and weed and rock shorelines produced the best.
Fishing on the Blood River goes year 'round with spring fishing concentrating on shoreline structure and shallow drops where cover is available. Summer follows with the fish moving into deeper waters and main creek and river channels. Fall fishing is the same as spring, and winter finds fish active after 2-3 days of mild weather near mouths of bays.
The Blood River has some of the finest crappie fishing I've ever experienced. For more information call Lynhurst Resort at 1-888-BIG-BASS....It's worth the trip.