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Did you get to fish Patoka this last weekend? We found some crappie in the back 1/3 of the bay. They were in brush that's along the old creek channel.
Back before Patoka Lake was flooded there were flats that had creeks running though them. Brush often will grow along the EDGE of the creek channel. Even if the area is farmed the creek edges are not plowed. When the area was dry the creeks and the brush along the edges created wildlife corridors. Fox, coyotes, rabbits and other critters will travel the edge of the creek looking for food yet still having cover.
Fish do the same thing when the area gets flooded. They will follow the same creek channels.
Look for areas that have sharp bend in the creek channel and that have brush. Or look for a higher spot along the creek channel with brush. Crappie and bass will tend to gather in these areas.
Patoka has so much potential structure for the fish to use that it's often hard to pin point which structure the fish are using at that particlar time of the day.
We found fish in 16 ft of water and about 8 to 12 ft down.
If you have a wide angle cone on your depth finders transducer it might be intereseting to cruise around these secondary bays with larger creeks and look for fish suspended in the 8 to 12 ft region. And if you find fish and brush along the old creek channel you might want to fish it with a live minnow for a few minutes.
Last Sunday the fish were deep and active. Try throwing out a 1/8 oz jig head and counting it down to 14 seconds and then reeling in slowly but steadily. White curely tails jig bodies were the ticket last Sunday for my fishing partner.
Fish may even follow old ditches out of the deeper water into the 15 ft depths.
I didn't noticed that much shad this week. Normally in Oct I will see huge schools of small shad on the surface. These shad form huge balls or schools and travel near the surface in the fall. They were absent from the cove we fished this last weekend.
Water temps were still in the low 50's deg F.