I went to my Dad's pond over the weekend, since we were celebrating his birthday. I had three of my kids with me, plus my brother and his 2 year old son on Saturday. Sunday, it was just me and my kids, the oldest of which is 7. We fished about an hour each day. Both days were overcast, with a thunderstorm chasing us away on Saturday, and there were scattered showers during the afternoon on Sunday, but it was dry while we were out.

I was using a small (#12?) bead-head nymph on my 8' 5/6 wt. The others were using garden worms and plastic grubs on jigs with spin-casting rods. No casting was necessary, the fish were right along the bank, mostly under floating dead aquatic vegetation from last season. I don't know whether this was pre-spawn, mid-spawn, or post-spawn, but I do know that pond is seriously overrun with crappie. Combining our catches, we landed 28 fish on Saturday and 21 on Sunday, most of which fell to my nymph. Only 2 or 3 were over 6" long and most were about 4" or 5".

The technique that seemed to work best was to let the nymph pendulum out past the matted floating grass and let it sink on a semi-tight line. My rod was more a jig-pole than a fly rod. If no take on the initial drop, slowly jig it up and down while moving it along the bank. If slack is allowed to develop in the line, the fish can get free when they bite, and bites will be difficult to detect. With tension in the line, a hookset is much more reliable. Fish would not pick the nymph up off the bottom, but would bite it while it was falling. They were mostly 1'-2' below the surface. Didn't try topwaters, but the others didn't have much success because their hooks were too big for the little fish. The fish seemed to be just a bit bigger slightly farther from the bank, and slightly deeper, but all of these fish were stunted.

I did fillet most of the fish from Saturday and everyone got a bite, but that was way too much effort for such a small amount of meat.