10/14/06 Otter Pit Fishing Report

Caught 18 very nice crappie today. Largest was 12" long and 14 oz in weight. All these fish were over 10" in length and I noticed they all were like little footballs. I am starting to get the impression that the bigger crappie are being caught in the fall of the year. Last year I caught larger crappie in Oct and Nov.

Water temps at the surface were 65 deg F. This is down four deg F from last Sunday's surface temps in this same pit.

Otter Pit is the smallest of the three large pits on Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area.

Air temps were 58 deg when I arrived at the pit at 4 PM. I only fished for two yours and left around 6 pm.

Winds were out of the West or NW at around 10 mph. I had to use #4 setting on my MinKota 55 All Terrain just to go slowly against this wind. The highest speed setting is 5 on the foot pedal. Lowest is 1 on the dial. I think that #4 setting on the foot pedal dial is about 80% power.


I spend about 45 minutes trying to locate a brush pile that I found last week and marked with a bobber. I found it after searching for a while. Seems the the Garmin eTrex Vista was showing this way point jumping around a bit today. I remarked this brush pile with a more bland type of cork. Now it's harder to find. I searched for the cork for about 20 minutes before I could find it again. It's about 1ft under the surface. I tied the cork on too short or the weight may have slide down the drop off another foot. I did mark the spot again with my gps just to make sure.

I then found a point of land that juts out a ways into the lake. There is a shallow grassy flat that goes out quite a ways from the shoreline before it drops off into 20ft and then 30 ft deep water and then drops again into 50ft of water. I had caught one nice crappie here before while fishing a charlie Brewer Crappie Slider. That fish was 11" long and one of the nicer crappie in this pit.

I ended up finding some brush near a drop off and that was the ticket today. I was catching one fish after another for a while. And they were all nice fat 10" + crappie. I caught about 4 of the 9" fish also. But most were 10", 11" and then the biggest was 12" long. I was surprised that there were this many bigger crappie in Otter Pit.

I didn't fish my normal drop off spot at all this time. I caught a limit from that spot last time I fished Otter Pit and wanted to rest it.

Also didn't fish another spot where I found some brush.

I got a late start as I ended up watching Purdue and IU play Football today. Both games were televised and both teams won. Purdue beat Northwestern and IU beat IOWA.

After cleaning all these fish I watched Michigan beat Penn State. Michigan's front line looks impressive tonight.

All the fish I caught had stomachs full of minnows or small gizzard shad. It was hard to tell as the bait fish were partially digested already. Today was by far the best day as for as catching bigger fish and lots of them. If I had gotten there earlier I could have caught a limit for sure.

Find some deep water drops next to shallow water and add some brush and you got the recipe for some nice crappie in Otter Pit.

I noticed that the wind was blowing across this flat area full of submergent vegetation. This area is about 3 or 4 ft deep and I am betting that the winds created some current that was blowing critters out of the grassy area into the deeper water. I think the crappie were holed up on the brush piles in about 17 ft of water waiting for minnows to blow off the flats. I didn't fish the flats as I don't like fishing in shallow water with my drop shot setup.

I used a 10 ft long graphite crappie pole and 6 lb test stren line. A #2 gold aberdeen hook tied to the main line with a loop knot. And then added a finessee drop shot weight (1/4oz) that I purchased from Bass Pro Shops online.

If you get the chance to fish this month give it a go. The fish are starting to feed heavily getting ready for winter. Shad are going into the bays and the crappie are following them.