Anyone pulling cranks at Patoka lake?
I'm curious if anyone else is trying to pull crank baits at Patoka lake. I've done this one time and caught three nice crappie in the Lick Fork Area.
I had a friend call me yesterday and said he was having a hard time finding any fish except for those little stripers.
He's not been fishing the last three months and now he can't locate the crappie in the normal summer places. He can't even find them on his 1198 Humminbird SI unit either. He can find the deep brush piles but he's not seeing fish in them.
I suggested that maybe the fish are out suspended along the breaks or channel in areas that In-Fisherman Crappie Wisdom Book calls "Confined Open Water". When they are out in open water chasing bait fish they can be hard tof ind and hard to catch. But that's where I think that they are. Which is why I'm getting into trolling crank baits for them. I've caught a lot of largemouth black bass out over 50 ft deep water about 10 to 20 ft down. I was really surprised to find that the bass were suspending out over the deep water basins. But I've only caught a few crappie duing this. I've yet to find the right depth, speed and color lure to catch the crappie in big numbers.
Now this spring I did manage to find some nice big females that were getting ready to spawn. They were out over open water suspended and not far from a spawning shelf of water that was about 7 ft deep at the end of the submergent weeds. The lake's color is green due to a lot of algae or other micro-organisms in the water. These old coal mines strip pits are very deep and have filled in with water. They are fully of minerals and have a very high (extreme) conductivity which indicates that there are a lot of Ion's in the water that can carry an electrical current. This is probably due to all the minerals that were in the ground that was disturbed in order to get the coal out. This high conductivity makes it hard for IDEM Fishery people doing their surveys with electric shock boats.
Any way I'm still trying to figure out where the crappie are. I know that a lot of people catch them down south while trolling crank baits.
I'm thinking about buying and installing a "Happy Troller" plate on my motor to help me slow down while trolling. It's either that or buy a Minn-Kota Terrova with the I Pilot in it. It's either that or a new hand gun or a new AR 15 type hunting rifle. Those three things are on my wish list right now. I'll probably just get the $100 happy troller and just continue to use my current Minn-Kota trolling motor and my older hunting rifle. I'm not even sure what type of handgun I would get if I did actually get one. Some thing that's not too expensive to shoot and that had ammo available for it now. Ammo supplies are getting better but not many stores have any 22 long rifle shells in stock. I read where the number of women buying or getting carry permits in Vanderburgh County has nearly doubled this year. I guess a lot more women bought 22 cal hand guns to carry and they increased the number of people buying 22 ammo. No matter why all I know is that there is still a shortage of 22 ammo at the Evansville Gander Mountain Store last Saturday afternoon.
I need to change out the spark plugs on my motor if I keep slow trolling as carbon must be building up on the ends of the plugs. I'm using stabil and sea foam in the gas to help burn it cleaner and keep the engine free of extra carbon deposits. That's helping but I still can't go slow enough without the motor stopping. I figure a little hotter (shorter white part of the plug -insulator) might help keep the engine running better at very slow speeds.
I spend this morning organizing the boat and tackle boxes. I've got three soft tackle boxes of crank baits that I went though and organized some what. All the shallow runners in one box and all the medium depth runners in another box. I've got 14 plastic storage boxes of crank baits with some compartments filled with two or even three crank baits.
Some of the crank baits needs some work. I need to install a new treble hook in a few of them and paint three or four of the old bomber balsa wood crank baits. Dad must have removed the paint off them and never got around to repainting them. I do remember seeing him painting some crank baits but he didn't do a very good job compared to todays painters. Today you can use a air gun to spray paint these baits and get a better finish on them vs using a brush. Dad was never very artistic. He should have talked my mom into painting them for him. She's very handy with a paint brush and did a lot of craft work. She is the artist in our family. Me, I just want to catch some fish. :)
This week will be cooler and only getting up into the 80's and not as humid. The fish don't really care about the Air temperature as they can just go shallow or deep and adjust to the water temp and amount of sunlight.
Winds were out of the North and East this past two days and the lake conditions will be different than when the winds come out of the South.
That's exactly what Patoka Larry said
[QUOTE=raporter;518456]It is a strange year. Been hitting some deep brush lately with little results.
Best results have come near trees(Not necessarily in the trees)in the 20'+ range. Been casting the jig and letting it go to the bottom then VERY slowly steadily retrieving it. Some are hitting it hard and some are just sucking it in and the line gets heavy.
Also been getting some nice channels doing this.
Another thing that is working is vertical jigging when I see them on the locator.[/QUOTE]
My good friend Larry said that he's having no luck in the deep brush piles this week. He's been working the last thee months and just didn't have time to fish every day like he normally did since he retired. But he's laid off right now and back out on Patoka every day.
You probably see him more often than I do these days and you are on the lake more than me.
There is a tread going on at crappie.com INDIANA Forum that pertains to trolling crank baits. There is a guy who goes by Crevan over there that trolls cranks a lot. And there is another long thread in the Mississippie State Forum that talks about pulling cranks. I'ts got over 101 posts on it about pulling crank baits.
If I lived up by Patoka Lake I'd be fishing it a lot more often. Thanks for the feedback. If I hear any good news from Larry I'll pass it on to this forum.
Fishing report for July 28th Sunday 2013
First off I'd like to say ... Don't go fishing at Bluegrass Pit on a Sunday when the weather is nice as you will have to compete with 30 other boats and fisherman not to mention all the kayakers plowing though the fishing grounds.
I had two women in kayaks try to cut though my fishing area right when I was catching my best bass of the day. I had already caught two nice 3 lb bass on this flat and one nice 10" big crappie and had been trolling the area. I stopped to cast a spinner bait on a flat that reached out from the shoreline and was making casts towards the shallows when out of the right corner of my eye I see two woman in Kayaks approaching along the shoreline. One said to me, "We will only be a minute and indicated that she intended to row right through where I was fishing. I politely asked her if she could go around me and not go though the fishing area. And then explained the rules of fishing etiquette to her. She complied and hopefully I helped her avoid any future confrontations with fishermen. I explained to her that I was catching fish at the time and she would disturb the fishing grounds if she and her companion rowed though these shallow flats. I'm not sure she really understood the concept but she did comply with my request to row around my boat and use the deeper water outside where I was fishing. We exchanged a few words about how nice the day was and they moved on. She now knows that it's not polite to cut between a fishing boat and the shore line and that will really irritate a lot of fisherman. I doubt that anyone had ever taught her this unspoken rules that exits between most fisherman. I try to practice this rule too. But there are times when a lake is so crowded that it's hard to not cut between someone and the bank. Especially when they anchor 150 ft away from a shallow point that extends out into the lake for 100 ft. One guy was doing this last Sunday and one minute he was catching out toward deeper water and then the next he was catching back into the shallow water. He was at least 300 ft out from the point's land. And he was at the Mouth of the "H". The opening to the "H" at bluegrass is not that wide to begin with. And when there are two boats on each point at the Mouth of the "H" it's nearly impossible to go into the "H" without getting close to one of those two boats. By close I mean within about 100 ft. Note: these new rods and new ultra precision reels help guys make a lot longer casts these days as compared to the older rod and reels of yesteryears. Note: I'm currently reading "lucas on Bass" which was written in the 1940's when using SILK line was in fashion. Today's braided fire line is a lot different than those older fishing lines that they used back in the 1940 and 1960's. Todays modern Shimano or Ambassador Reels can cast a lot father than those older Heddon and Shakesphere reels.
It was impossible to troll on Sunday as every time I got a good line going a boat would move out into my path andI had to go around. I used the Side planer boat Sunday for the second time and got the tattle flag to work. The trouble was I didn't catch but 4 fish on it and the biggest one was the 10" crappie which made the flag go down ok. I caught a small bluegill on the crank bait's trailer jig and the crappie bit on the trailer jig as well.
I changed out the crank bait for a different colored one and then at the end of the day tried a third different colored crank bait.
I tried all depths using a Bandit 200 and a Bandit 300. I used anywhere from 25 ft of line out to 150 ft of line out and go no bites. I normally try fishing shallow crank baits first and then gradually let out more and more line until I find the fish.
I updated the Software on my Humminbird 898 unit and I think its' messed up the 2 D Sonar. I was not getting the fish symbols with the depth readings at all until I fiddled with the sonar settings. And the sonar is cluttered a lot until I turned off the Noise Filter all together. I had that set on Low by default. After I turned off the Noise Filter I started seeing the Fish symbols again. And I had the fish ID turned on with the fish Sensitivity turned all the way up to 10 and all the way down to 1. Worked best at 10.
Once I got the fish symbols and the fish depths I could see that most all the fish were at the surface from 7 ft down to 15 ft.
The water below 20 ft shows all kinds of debris in the water column. The water from the surface was clear down to about 20 ft with only a few fish symbols or schools of fish or bait fish. But below 20ft to the bottom there was a lot of cloudiness on the screen. Maybe it's air bubbles from all the **** speed boats. I saw a lot of boats going way over the idle speed limit. At idel speed you don't throw a wake behind your boat or see white water at the bow of the boat.
IDNR was on patrol for a couple of mintues at Bluegrass Pit. But that Green Uniform can be seen from a mile away. If they want to catch the speeders they need to blend in more. Right after IDNR left the water and pulled out their boat the other boats seems to go even faster. I could have easily filmed at least six or seven differnet boats going over the speed limit big time. Speeds are creeping up faster and faster.
Idle speed on my 35 hp Motor and 16 ft john boat is about 1.5 to 1.8 mph. I'd estimate that some of the boats that I saw were going at least 8 mph or maybe 1. Most were in the 5 to 6 mph ranges. Slow but not idle speed. Ok enough said. I'll let the IDNR CO's handle this and just hope that they don't make us go back to using trolling motors only like they did when Bluegrass first opened. My main fear is that they will get piss at the boaters if we all don't obey the rules and then no one will be allowed to use a gas motor on Bluegrass Pit. Now I see why they had that rule in the first place. How do one enforce a idle speed only when they can't really say what speed that is? Eash boat will idle differently and who's really to say if the boat driver has the throttle down all the way or had it inched up a little bit and was calling that idle speed? The CO has never stopped me yet. But I did see him checking other boats for fishing license and life jackets. Perhaps he's not so concerned with our speed. But is more concerned with our safety and our having a fishing license and not catching too many fish. I didn't see the CO pull anyone over for speeding Sunday. But I really was not watching him that closely as I was trying to fish.
When I used the side planer board I have to keep an eye on the tattle flag at all times and that requires me to turn back to see it. When I just fish with single pole in a rod holder I can see the poll bending in the rear view mirror. So I prefer that method better than using the side planer board. I caught three small stripers in the "H" section just trolling a small bandit 300 behind the boat about 30 ft out. I'm surprised that fish will stike a lure that's in the prop's wash. But they do not seem to care. Perhaps the bigger fish use the boat presence to help them attack the smaller bait fish. Perhaps the boat's prop kills a few bait fish when you run through a school of shad at the surface and the bigger fish know this and follow our boats. Sharks are known to follow fishing boats. One bull shark was radio tagged and was found to follow a fishing boat using radio telemetry tracking. I guess the shark knew that the fishing boat would put some bait fish out for him to steal. :( . All I know is that I caught some small stripers right behind the boat pulling some crank baits.
I did end up catching three nice LM bass, one 10" long White Crappie, One 9" long bluegill and three small stripers. By small I mean about 5" long or less. The **** crank bait was almost as big as those fish. I was going to keep them for bait. I was going to cut them up and use them in a crawfish trap but decided that it was too much trouble and so I let them go at the end of the day. I also didn't take any pictures at all. Although I had my DSLR camera and my Garmin Montana 605T with me in the boat. Too much trouble to get the camera out with fish slime on my hands. I needed another person in the boat with me to take the pictures who had clean hands. I don't like getting my new camera all dirty with fish slime and didn't want to take the time to get the hand soap out to wash my hands before taking a pictures. Besides I have plenty of pictures of these type of LM Bass and Crappie that I've caught at Bluegrass in the past.
Bottom line is that I didn't really enjoy the day as it was way too crowded. It was still pretty crowded when I left around 5 pm as one truck and boat trailer waited until I moved my truck so that he could find a parking spot. He pulled into my parking space right after I vacated it to go get my boat and leave.
The weather was great. It was a little bit windy but not too bad. Water temp was warm according to a guy who went for a swim and was coming back with his kayak when I got there that morning. He was wearing a wet suit and carrying his kayak to his car. That was at the North End of Bluegrass which I checked out before launching at the South End. BTW the North End parking lot had about 6 or 7 boat trailers in it's parking lot Sunday Morning.
The skies were clear to partly cloudy and it didn't rain at all Sunday. Winds were out of the NW most of the day. Typical bluebird sky after a frontal system passed though this week. High Pressure must have been dominating the area Sunday. So fishing was tough. But I did have a good time catching the bass. I caught all three of the bass on a ultra light outfit and had to play them for a while before I could net them. Using 6 lb test line and a limber UL Slow Action St Croix rod made it fun. Just cast out a small spinner bait and real it in really slow over the top of the dark green fern like grass. That stuff is where the fish are located. I don't know which type of grass that is but I know it when I see it on my baits.
I also found that trolling cranks at Bluegrass catches a lot more weeds if you don't stay in the 10 ft deep or deeper water. Anytime I got into the 8 ft and 7 ft depths I would get a bunch of weeds on my treble hooks. This make the crank bait run ineffectively.
I picked up some Bandit 100's an a footlose bandit
[QUOTE=GeoFisher;519148]Man, those are nice........
I really need to try crappie at Patoka sometime.....[/QUOTE]
Some time the crappie are up in the weeds in the shallow flats. Troling though that stuff with a crank bait can be tough. Even if the weeds are below the surface by a couple of feet there are always some free weeds floating on the surface.
I spend more time pulling weeds off the crank baits than I do fish. :( Hey, That's fishing though.
I've got three soft bags now (each with 4 of the 7250 Plano Plastic Boxes full of crank baits. About 1/2 of them are new Bandit Crank Baits. The rest I got from my late father's collection of crank baits that we used for 30 years down at KY lake.
I remember him talking about going down to KY lake in late Oct or Nov and walking the banks of the islands and finding all kinds of baits hung up in the buck bush. When the water's up in the spring people lose all kinds of baits in the buck brush. Back in the 1950's the buck brush was thick as tourist in Paris in the summer time. But when the corps drop the water level those baits are hanging on the buck brush branches which are not high and dry. It's like picking Christmas tree ornaments off the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.
Dad use to take those old crank baits back home and repaint them and replace the hooks if needed. I found some nice arrow heads one time when I went there with him in the fall. There was a old fort on the bluff at the mouth of the bay where we used to fish. And I heard that some people would find civil war mini balls at times. I think that was Ft Danielson. It was at the mouth of Cypress Bay right on the KY/TN line.
Early Fall Crappie on Crank baits
I snagged five good slab crappies yesterday while trolling crank baits at Bluegrass F&W Area lakes.
They were all about 17 ft to 18 ft deep over 18 to 26 ft of water.
I used my Humminbird 898 SI unit and a Lake Master digital map to troll the 22 ft contour line plus or minus 2 ft. When I set up the Lake master card to show this area in green on my map it's easy to keep the map's boat icon in the green area to stay at the right depth.
Some of the fish were caught in a inside bend in the shoreline. Others were caught off points along the shoreline.
All were caught in the area called "Confined Open Water" as described by the In Fishermen Book Crappie Wisdom.
All Five crappie were over 10" lone and two were about 11" and 12" long. All were healthy fish. Their stomachs were full of shad. None of these fish had any visible egg sacks. I've caught crappie in Nov and Dec that had egg sacks in them. But those eggs don't really fully develop until April of the next year.
