Help with Crappie fishing

[Charlie02]

Finally get a chance to head out this weekend and do some crappie fishing. I live in Northen KY now but retired out of Ft. Knox and fished Rough and Nolin for years. Has anyone been crappie fishing or has the rain messed everything up, I would very much appreciate any information, thanks in advance. Charlie

[mperry]

I do not live around there but I do read several forums and from what I have read they are tearing the crappie up in Nolin right now. Fishing the ledges seems to be the way to go. Sorry I could not be any more help. In my area I have been fishing anywhere there is stumps. The lake is below 60 degrees now and seems they are sticking tight to cover. Hope this helps.

[Moose1am]

Mike is correct. Crappie have been on the feed this last month. Water temps have fallen down into the mid 50's deg F. The crappie that I have been catching have had full stomachs. Full of small shad that is.

I just read a good article about open water crappie fishing and they featured a couple of good crappie fishermen in the article. I learn something new with each article. You can find the article online at www.infisherman.com or go directly to the article from this link:

http://www.in-fisherman.com/magazine...WaterCrappies/

Just highlight the above two lines with the mouse and then right click on the mouse while holding the mouse pointer on the highlighted text. Choose the copy option. Then move the mouse pointer to the address bar and highlight the address bar. Right click again while the mouse pointer is located in the address bar and then choose the paste option from the menu that appears when you right clicked the mouse button. That's the easy way to find the link and read the article.

Todd Huckabee is featured on the third page. He is a great crappie fisherman. The first two pages deal with trolling crank baits for crappie which is a good method for summer crappie.

Huckabee and the other guys all agree that crappie will follow the shad. Shad are hanging around the drops in the old creek beds this time of the year. The crappie have followed the shad to the upper ends of the reservoirs and into the mouths of the secondary feeder streams. A good area to check is big U shaped bends in the feeder creek channels, High spots along the creek channel with brush, and the intersections of two or more creeks or ditches with brush.

I fish a lot like Huckabee does. I drop shot minnows instead of those expensive YUM Beavertails. I check out the price of those 2" YUM bait and I can buy a few dozen minnows for the price of 10 of the YUM baits. I think the point that Todd is trying to make is that bigger baits catch bigger fish. I have noticed that the bigger shiners keep the smaller crappie from biting the bait. I am catching much bigger crappie this year due to the fact that I switched to bigger shinner and big Rosy Red Chub minnows. A 2" chub will catch a bigger crappie it seems. I can fish the same spot and catch small fish with small 1" long shiners of fathead minnows but when I put on a 2 or 2.5" long Shiner I catch the bigger fish.

I fish a drop off near a big flat that's about 6 to 8 ft deep and covers about two acres. Along three sides of this flat there is deep water. The flat is more like a long underwater point. It's a man made strip pit so it's shaped differently than most points on normal lakes. This pit was dug out when they mined the pit for coal. Anyway the three sides drop off into 50 ft of open water at the end of the flat and on one side there is a channel that runs along the SE side of the flat. There is a quick drop off that goes from 7 ft deep to over 20 ft deep and then it goes back up into shallow water again. The channel runs between the main land and this small island. The flat is actually a long underwater point of the tip end of this Island. The point is that the crappie feed on the flat in low light conditions and have quick access to deep water nearby. The deeper water at the edge of the flat had underwater brush that stands about 7 to 10ft up off the bottom. And this brush is all along the edge of the creek channel. That's were I found the crappie. I caught a limit fishing there the first time and then the next trip I was fishing with a friend and we caught close to a limit in just under two hours.

The article says that the crappie are in the back of the bays and I agree. I have a friend that fish's Patoka Lake and he has been catching the crappie in the back 1/3 of some of the side feeder creek bays in the Lick Fork Area. He told me that he was catching some nice 14" long Black Crappie along the creek channel before we got all the rain and the water got muddy.

As Todd Huckabee says. If you get to a spot and fish it for five or ten min and you are not getting bites then move to the next spot to located more active crappie. If the fish are there and willing to bite they will let you know it. If the fish are not there or not in a negative mood you may not be able to coax them into biting so you are better off moving to another spot.

If I were to fish Rough River I would head towards the last 1/3 end of the reservoir and start searching for big schools of shad. Then using the depth finder located any brush along the creek channel and look for bait fish and or big schools of fish hanging around the brush.

This is the time of the year that the crappie and bass are putting on the feed.

Sometimes the crappie will get run out of the best spots by the largemouth bass. If that's the case the will move out over the deeper flats in say 15 to 20 ft of water and suspend about 10ft down from the surface out over the flats. After a lake turns over the crappie can be found right on the bottom of the flats. Todd uses a drop shot rig to keep the bait above the bottom while the weight is put on the line below the hook. This way he can feel the bottom with the 1/2 oz weight and have the bait above the bottom about 18" or so. He checks the depth finder to see if the fish are right on the bottom or suspended up off the bottom a few feet and then ties on the hook accordingly. If the fish are up 24" off the bottom then tie the hook 24" above the weight. Then when the weight hit the bottom you have the bait right in front of the fish. Remember to compensate for the fact that the transducer may be 2 ft down below the surface of the lake on the bottom of your boat or on the bottom of your trolling motor. Most new depth Sounders have the ability to compensate the depth readings for this fact. If not then you have to do this in your head. Say the transducer is 2ft under the surface on the bottom of our trolling motor. And you are reading the bottom at 20 ft. Well the bottom is 20 ft away from the transducer but the bottom is 22 ft deep. Just remember to compensate when you set up your baits to fish for suspended fish. A fish that shows up at 10ft on the depth finder is actually 12 ft below the surface and 10 ft away from the transducer. This is more important when the fish are suspended than when they are hugging the bottom. Also when you are trolling crank baits for crappie you need to know the depth of the fish and how to get the baits to run at the right depth.

Get a good Topo Map of Rough. Fishing Hot Spots has a good topo map of Rough River. The Garmin Map Source Fishing Hot Spot Digital Map of Rough is pretty good.

I have only been to Rough River a few times and that was just for a pleasure boat ride during the summer. It looks like a nice lake to fish when the boat traffic is not so busy.

Regards,

Moose1am

[dpage70]

we went sunday on nolin the results are posted under the thread Nolin Lake Condidtions. hope they help.

[Charlie02]

Thanks for the help, will post results when I return.