best lakes

[crappieking14]

what do you guys think is the best crappie water in the state for numbers of fish and or size?

[SlabKing]

My vote goes to the Snake River for size and numbers.

[crappieking14]

i have heard that the snake is really good. how do you fish that place? is there a lot of good shore fishing?

[SlabKing]

It can be tuff trying to figure them out but once you do......SLAB heaven. No joke, the schools can have thousands of fish in them during the pre-spawn. You can't miss them on depthfinder because your screen will have a thick black line running down the middle of it for 30-50 yards. Look for creek mouths or channel ledges outside of the creeks. Crankbaits work best but if you find a good bank spot you'll knock them dead on jigs. There's not really any cover out there so every dock you run into will be loaded with crappie as well. The main river current is strong so crappie only have two places to go...into the coves and creeks....or deep in the main channel and tucked up behind humps or points. So when you find them it's pretty easy to hook 200 fish a day with most of them going 10-12" and few over 15". There are white, black, and hybrids out there. There's also flathead/blue/white/ & channel cats, bluegill, perch, smallmouth, walleye, shad, and steelhead.

Here are some numbers from a one year study of the Snake River sections in Washington: The catch of resident sport fish was dominated by three species. Crappie were the most abundant sport fish caught (34,072).......Smallmouth bass ranked second among fish caught overall (25,042 fish)............Anglers caught an estimated 18,156 channel catfish and harvested 73% (13,278) of those caught.


I'll send you a PM for locations.

[MastaFisher]

When is prime time over there? I have spring break in mid april, and that sounds like the place to be!

[SlabKing]

That's the thing I love about the Snake. It gets cold mountain runoff until June. The water is only in the mid to high 50's during May so the fish don't spawn until June lol. They'll be schooled up and heavy into pre-spawn by Memorial Day weekend. About a week or two after that they'll spawn. I'd say the 1st or 2nd week of June is the peak. It's perfect because you can catch the spawn west of the moutains in May then go out there from the end of May through June and have another spawn to fish.

For Spring Break Moses Lake, Upper Goose, or Silver Lake would be pretty good bets. I know the walleye, perch, and crappie will be biting good out on Moses by then and the walleye, bass and catfish will be biting on Goose. I wouldn't bother with the Snake until at least the last weekend of May.

[crappieking14]

thanks a lot for the pm. the snake is so big, its kinda hard to know where to fish. sounds like its a good place to get some big slabs :D .

[Kokanee King]

I think that we might have to make a group trip over there....

[MastaFisher]

^sounds good to me

[SlabKing]

I think that we might have to make a group trip over there....

Sounds like the begining of a good plan to me. Better bring two big coolers. One for the crappie and the other for catfish. This time I'm spooling up 40lb Power Pro so I don't get broke off in a brushpile by another #$@* flathead:D.