Boltz Lake Crappie

[mbk]

I've been thinking of hitting up Boltz Lake in another month for crappie. It's only about 30 minutes from me and it has been posted on this forum about how they went down last March and pulled out a bunch of stunted white crappie from there and moved them to Taylorsville.

I came across an interesting video here that documents them pulling out the crappie:
White Crappie Fish Removal at Boltz Lake in Dry Ridge, Ky. 41035 - Video

Around 13:30 you can get an idea of the size of crappie they pulled out. Some were bigger than I thought they would be. Some very small.

What I'm wondering is - assuming they pulled 500 crappie out of a 90 acre lake last March- has 1 year been enough time to expect to see good numbers of 9+ inch crappies from there?

[Carter1]

I think the person best able to answer your question is the biologist for that area. You can find out who it is and the number to call from KDFWR. Hopefully you catch some big ones. I haven't fished that lake in over 40 years so this is the best info I can give you.

[mbk]

I finally made it down to Boltz yesterday. Not the best day for fishing. Cool and very windy, blowing away from the dam. Didn't have much time to fish. It was sunny and started fishing the shallows even though the fish finder told me not to... Didn't see anyone catch anything from the bank either. Finally as I made my way down toward the left, I saw fish holding between 9-13 feet in 17-22 foot of water. Out of that range and you couldn't see a single fish on the finder. So, with not too much time left to fish, I drifted down in that range and pulled crappie, and a few blue gill, out right and left. Picked up a dozen in about 30 minutes that way. If only I'd known were they were sooner, I would have had a really good day crappie fishing there.

Anyway - I wanted to check on the size of the crappie there too since they extracted 1,600 last March and moved them to Taylorsville. I had a small sample size but I see they are still on the smaller side. About 3 were between 8.5 and 9 inches. The rest were all about 7.5 inches. So, there are probably some nice ones in there but the majority still seem to be smaller.

I will be trying the lake again. The one big complaint I have is that the state marked the boat ramp/lake twice on 22/467 but once you got on Dry Ridge Mt. Zion there was no sign, nothing. We passed it up 3x before realizing it was the little dirt road almost directly across from Mohawk Dr. They need to mark it better.

[Hershey102]

If it makes you feel any better I missed the sign last year too. I recall that it was somewhat obscured by a tree that was overdue for a haircut.