Thread: A few Anna questions

Hello all. I'm new to the area (VA), but not new to crappie.com. Got started in Georgia with this site. Great network across the states for crappie fisherman. I'm in the military and have a very busy schedule, so normally I try to stay close to home for fishing....Potomac river, closer to DC. But with all this rain, the river and all its tribs are a mud hole right now. I have a couple days to take my son fishing this week, so now I'm looking at lakes. We are going to hit up Burke lake first, since it's closer, but if I can't find much there, we are heading to Anna on Wednesday. I'm pretty decent at finding crappie, but as you know it's a big lake. So my questions are, especially if anyone lays eyes on the lake in the next couple of days...how is the water clarity? I've read the upper part of the lake gets started first in regard to crappie. I also read the bridge pilings are pretty good up there. So, I have that area in mind, but not if it's pretty muddy also. Otherwise I would go down lake. I predominantly cast and retrieve with jigs. I love to shoot docks and work bridge pilings. I appreciate any help, and at the least I would return the favor with a detailed report, good or bad. Thanks!

Sorry for the late post. We fished the next day (yesterday) and today at different locations. So, with that said, Anna was a flop. I burned plenty of gas trying to find them though. The first stop was the location described by slack tide above. Didn't find them there, nor did I find them at about 20 other locations I hit up every bridge piling from the two splits all the way down to the damn. And fished alot of the rip rap at all those locations also. Shot jigs under alot of docks too. Ducked into several long coves, graphing the points, secondary points, mouths of the coves. I never marked a school of fish around any bridge pilings, rip rap, or coves. I couldn't believe it. Water temps were 48-50 every where except the hot water discharge area down by the damn...which was 58-59. So I fished that area too, thinking maybe things were into the spawn with the warmer temps. Nothing. I've fished alot of reservoirs similar to Anna throughout the southeast, and don't remember a single time not at least finding schools of fish on the fish finder....getting them to bite is a different story sometimes. In any case, it was a beautiful lake, and sure did look good. I see why it becomes so popular in the summer for pleasure boaters.