My two bros and I fished Silver for the first time yesterday. We havent caught any crappie since we were tiny tots and the rumor was that they were biting at Silver back in the canals, so off we went.

The weather wasnt too bad other than an annoying wind that blew most of the morning. It never did rain on us other than a very light mist occasionally. The sun even came out a few times.

I took my underwater camera hoping to get some video of the fishing and maybe even use the camera to catch a few. Turns out the water in Silver Lake is soooo stained that the camera was useless. The cam could only see about 1 foot without lights and when I turned on the light it was worse than being in a dense fog with your bright lights on.

We started in the main lake based on rumors that the keeper sized fish had not moved into the canals yet. The plan was to scout around for schools using the Garmin Panoptix and then get our limits of HUGE crappie in no time at all.

Well.... not so much

The Panoptix worked great for the most part but, because of the really shallow water, most of the time I could only see about 40-50 feet max in any direction around the boat. If we were in the pads, that reduced range to pretty much zero. Still, singles and schools of fish showed up really well in open water. If they were there, I could see them.

We started out at the launch and slowly motored over towards the south west shore line and then worked our way along the pad line back towards the canals. Didnt see anything much on the sonar and didnt get one single nibble.

Then the wind picked up mid morning we let it blow us over toward the south side of Waldron Is. I spotted a couple of nice schools of something but all we caught was one 4" perch. It was tough fishing with that much wind and what ever wad down there wasnt interested in what we were throwing at the time - which was every crappie jig we had plus worms, grubs and misc bass gear.

We let the wind blew us more or less back to the launch and then worked along the shore for a while north of the launch and caught one more 4" perch. Not much of anything was showing on sonar either.

Finally around noon we decided to move into the canals. Worked our way part way in and tried for a while in the thick pads with zero bites.

At noon we decided to go all the way into the canals. About that time - 1ish or so, the wind died down to a more manageable level.

As soon as we got out of the pads and into the wider section of the canals, we spotted 5 or 6 boats all bunched up together and figured we had to be in "the spot". We didnt want to crowd anyone so we headed down one canal a ways and as soon as we threw ANYTHING in the water we had fish ON!.

After about 15 minutes of non-stop catching we started joking that if you didnt have at least 3 bites and one fish on in the fist 10 seconds, you better check your line. Chances are there was a weed or some crap fouling the jig! At times we were literally catching as many as 5 or 6 fish every minute! It took longer to get them off the hook and toss them overboard than it did to catch them.

The problem was - 98% of the catch was 4"-5" perch - and they didnt care what you threw at them they were going to EAT IT!

After my 30th or 40th baby perch - which wasnt that long time wise - I finally caught a crappie - 8 7/8". Oh well, back he went. Then, after another 20 or 30 perch, another one 8 1/2". Then my bro caught a nice fat 11 1/4" crappie and then another one 9 1/2" - with a few hundred baby perch in between each one and the occasional 8" crappie or 4" bluegill.

We fished about two hours and caught a total of 5 keeper crappie between the three of us and probably at least 300 baby perch and maybe 20 bluegill and under sized crappie.

This would be a GREAT place to bring kids for truly NON-stop fishing action. If you do bring kids, dont plan on fishing yourself. You will be too busy helping them handle their catch!

Pretty much everyone we saw was doing the normal bobber and crappie jig routine. My bobber fell apart after about 15 minutes and I tossed my jig over without it and kept catching fish, so I left it off. Turns out I caught slightly bigger fish if I let it drift down towards the bottom and slowly reeled it in - if they would let it get to the bottom.

After a while both my bros ditched their bobbers and did like I did and it worked great for us. We seemed to get more hookups on slightly larger fish by not using the bobber and just slowly reeling in the jigs. We even caught tons of fish trolling slowly from spot to spot.

Chartreuse seemed to be the color of choice for us but it didnt make that much difference. My best setup seemed to be a 1/32oz chartreuse jig head with a small chartreuse curly tail on it or a small piece of Gulp maggot or a small1" piece of chartreuse powerbait worm. We also tried real worms but they werent any better or worse and didnt last so we stuck with the artificial stuff.

We did get one 10" smallmouth but no other bass even though one of my bros spent some time trying for them.

We talked to two other boaters while we were there and they had similar reports - tons of baby perch and a few keeper crappie. The two or three guys fishing from shore were doing about the same. One of them was using bobbers and a brown crappie jig and he had his limit and left shortly after we got there. Not sure how long it took him though.

When we pulled out around 4:30 the dock at the boat launch was packed with people but I didnt see much catching going on.

The red circle in the picture was where all the boats were gathered. The red line is everywhere we saw tons of fish on sonar and caught non-stop. Outside those areas - it was mostly dead.

If you are bank fishing and taking kids, there is a resort that backs up on the canals by Hotspot #1 where you could bank fish if you want. I think they charge like $15 to get in but Im not 100% sure on that.

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