Lake Blackshear Crappie Sets New Record

The crappie weren’t exactly tearing it up at Lake Blackshear Saturday, April 13, 2019, but one bite saved the day for Casey Tanner, of Douglas.

Casey caught a black crappie certified at 3-lbs., 9.28-ozs., which sets a new Blackshear lake record by less than an ounce.

“I got there that morning and caught a few here and there moving around on my usual spots, but the fishing was not all that hot,” Casey said. “I tried to find some other areas with some fish but didn’t have any luck. At about 11:30, I thought, ‘It’s getting late. I need to find them now or go home.’ I went back to a spot where I caught a few that morning.”

Casey said he had some lines out trolling, and he was also straight-lining jigs and minnows as he trolled.

“She hit a minnow on a straight line,” Casey said. “It was a flat bottom with a little brush and just a few stumps in 8 feet feet of water. I could see a little something (on his electronics), but there wasn’t much brush at all.

Casey Tanner, of Douglas, with the Lake Blackshear record black crappie. Casey caught the 3-lb., 9.28-oz. slab on April 13, 2019.

“When I got her in the boat, she was pouring out eggs. I unhooked her quick and got her in the livewell, and she calmed down then and stopped releasing eggs.”

If Casey’s fish had kept spewing eggs, it might not have topped the previous record, a 3-lb., 8.5-oz. black crappie caught March 5, 2011 by Bubba Smith.

Casey got the crappie weighed on certified scales at Striplings General Store, and then he took it next door to Brad McDaniel at Flint River Outdoors. Brad put the fish in his minnow tank and kept it alive.

WRD Fisheries Biologist Rob Weller gave the official identification as a black crappie, the final step in GON approving Casey’s fish as a new Blackshear lake record.

On Tuesday, Casey was able to get off work, and he went back to Flint River Outdoors to get the fish and try to release it back at Lake Blackshear where it was caught. But unfortunately the fish didn’t make it.