Standing timber

[Jason Piper]

how does everyone here fish standing timber? which trees are the best to fish? Unfortunatly brush piles don't always produce!

[adamr]

the trees with more branches produce better for me. if you can find several trees close together this would also be a good spot. another thing that i always look for is irregularity. say a cove is packed with hardwoods (too many to chose from) and has one or two nice sized cedars, the cedars will probably be holding fish. of course the trees that are closer to channel breaks, bends and other contour changes will definitely be a good place to look.
generally when fishing the timber, i vertically fish. i try and keep my boat off a good distance and use a long pole to jig it or dip minnows. also try dropping to the bottom and slowly reeling up. this works sometimes for me as well.

[CrappiePappy]

Locally that's about the 2nd most consistant "structure" to find Crappie around. First would have to be "blowdowns" (fallen trees) that extend out into deeper water. But, for standing trees to produce more than a few fish, they have to have some "circumstances" ... large branches and several of them, isolated or surrounded by smaller trees, and being on a point or channel break/drop is also a good quality. Being in a position to be in the shade for a large portion of the day, may also add to their drawing power.

I cast to them, tightline next to them, vertical jig them, vertical cast them, and any other way I can get a jig or minnow down around them. In the early Spring (pre-spawn), mid Summer, and late Fall seems to be the best times for Crappie to be hanging around standing timber. At least locally (here in Ky) that seems to be the case -- on lakes with any appreciable amount of standing timber. Early Spring and late Fall seems to put the Crappie on the Cedar trees ... with the remaining times finding them on hardwoods. Of course, that doesn't always hold true (naturally! ....LOL!!) ... but, then nothing else seems to hold true "all" the time, in Crappie fishing, either ...LOL!! That's just one of the alluring factors and frustrating factors of Crappie fishing :D
A totally submerged Willow tree will hold Crappie - usually suspended over the top of the tree. A large Birch tree will hold a pretty good sized school - especially if it's in fairly deep water. It never hurts to have a small fir tree in close proximity to the larger hardwoods, either ... not so much for the Crappie to be in, but for the minnows to hide in (and keep the Crappie around). Large fir trees will hold fish, especially if isolated or on a hump ... on a channel edge, or in bunches and surrounded by hardwoods.
I fish weedless jigs about 95% of the time ... specifically because I fish (cast) "timber" most of the time. From blowdowns and stumps from early Spring to early Summer ... to standing timber in late Fall, I'm casting a jig - knocking on their "door", to see if anyone is at "home" :p
It also depends on the lake - and the amount and types of wood cover available to the fish, as well as the time of year. ....luck2ya .......cp

[Moose1am]

JT:

Man am I glad that you brought up this subject. It really is something that I have been thinking about for two years now. I fish Patoka Lake in the area upstream from where HWY 145 crosses the lake. That section of the lake is where the Patoka River feeds into the lake. There are several smaller streams that feed into the other sections of the lake but the Patoka River is the main feeder stream. It's the deepest of the feeder streams. The Little Patoka River Section of the lake is upstream from this bridge and it's the second largest feeder stream other than Lick Fork which feeds the south section of the lake.

All three main feeders steams are chock full of flooded and standing timber. Most of the trees have been standing in the water since 1978 at least. The lake filled up faster than the Corp of Engineers had planned due to the hard rains that occured in 1977 when the damn was finally built and closed off the Patoka River. The waters backed up so fast that the Corp didn't have time to cut down the standing trees in the new flood plain. The Patoka River winds though entire forests with only the small river channel having room to move a boat though. Up river the channel is only 100 to 150ft wide is most places and if you are not familar with the area then you can get lost and out of the river channel quick. In the late winter and early spring the water level is at 532 ft asl and some of the flats are either exposed an out of the water or very shallow. So if you get out of the river channel and out on the flats you can hit stumps or get stuck in the mud flat.

The spot that I started fishing is dumpling creek which is just upstream from Walls Boat Ramp. Walls is in the upper reaches of the Patoka River Part of Patoka lake and has some really nice Big Slab White Crappie in the March and early April. These fish come out of the River Channel and head into dumpling creeks back areas to spawn in the spring. The North Shoreline of Dumpling Creek has to warm up faster than the South Side as it's shallower and it's has more exposure to the Southern Sunlight than the South side. The south side of the bay entrace has the creek bed running though it. The creek comes out of the River Channel on the SE Side of mouth of the Bay and then runs about 2/3 back into the bay along the South side of the Bay before crossing over into the North Side of the Bay. The back of the bay forks out into two branches and has two feeder streams. The North branch in the back of the bay has some old road beds and there is still the remains of an old concrete bridge that often is explosed and out of the water in the early spring.

The crappie don't always stay in the creek bed though. This is what surprised me about this spot. The actually are found in the Northern Shoreline in an amonst the Standing Timber. You want to talk about a lot of standing timber. This North shoreline from the Mouth of Dumpling Creek to the back of the bay is full of standing timber. The timber comes out from the North Shoreline and filles about 100 yards out toward the middle of the bay. The timber runs from the mouth of the bay (NORTH SIDE) to the back of the bay and into the North Fork in the back of the bay. That is a lot of timber. Trying to find the crappie in all that timber is a real hard task.

The guys that win the Crappie USA tournaments caught all their crappie in this bay in a stretch of about 100 yards. They fished it with slip bobbers and jigs. They claim to have caught their fish in 12 to 10ft of water at 8ft below the surface. ie they set the slip bobber to stop the jig at 8 ft down from the bobber. That should put the jig at about 2 ft above the bottom or 4 ft above the bottom depending on the water levels in the springtime.

Now my question has always been which trees hold the crappie. Do I fish the outer edge of the treeline. Note: A lot of the tree tops are broken off at the 532ft level or at the 531ft level and are just a few inches below the surface of the water and it's very easy to have the boat ride up on top of a tree and almost tip over. . It also makes it hard to see the end of the treeline. Even the maps that I have of that lake don't really show a clear fence line or anything to mark the tree line. The map showes a dark area on the blueprint map. The area that I described above is shaded darker on the map where the trees were located in the arial photographs that were used to make the maps that have. I have been studying this site to see why it's so good as I have seen fish being caught in this wooded area by one of the pros that fishes this lake a lot. How he does it is beyond me. I didn't get the finer details.

But I did notice that if I could find several trees or several major branches of one tree in close proximity that I could catch a few crappie. I did find one tree that has laided over and I caught my biggest crappie there. That crappie weighted in at 1.5lbs but I forgot to measure it's lenght or take scale samples. Sorry!. I saw some nice 2lb white crappie being caught and released into those woods in the spring of 2003. The winner of the Crappie USA tournament had ten fish that weighed over 10lbs. Not as good as some of the Southern Lakes such as KY lake which have threadfin shad population but still a good sized crappie. The largest fish caught during the spring 2003 tournament was about 2.8 lbs and that is a nice sized crappie. So I know that there are big crappie in this lake. I have seen them in huge 100 quart Iglo coolers on ice after the Weigh in. I saw three of the big white coolers full of slabs that were all over 1lb.

My though on this is that a nice brush pile built somewhere in and amounst the trees or even three brush piles places in strategic locations that could be easily found would help concentrate the fish. Like I said the trees have been in the water for many years and a lot of the side branches have rotted off. So only the main trucks and the roots are left. They are like telephone pools standing in the water. I was planning on putting my PVC crappie trees in the water amoung those trees but I put them in a local lake instead. I just don't get to Patoka that often to make brush piles anyway.

So the main thing to look for is a breakline. Well there is a river channel that runs right past the North bank on the Mouth of this bay. That is an area where there is deep water (20 to 26ft ) right next to a very shallow water with huge stumps on the edge of the channel as well as some standing timber. Some of the trees there are over 100ft high and still stick out above the water level. The diameter of some of these trees are about 2ft or 3ft in diameter some maybe 4ft or so. I am talking about huge bottom land forest trees that once stood right along the banks of the Patoka River. I can't see the lake bottom but I would assume that the roots of some of those trees along the edge of the old river channel would be exposed due to errosion from the water in the river and that would be a great place to hold the big slabs. The North Side of the mouth of Dumpling Creek sits in an exposed spot and any winds will blow your boat out of the river channel and up on the very shalow water so it's hard to fish when there is a wind. And Patoka Lake always seems to be windy. It's in an area with hills and the winds can swirl around and change directions on you. One minute the wind seems to be out of the south and the next it's coming out of the North. Make for tough fishing at the mouth of the bay as this area has large stretchs of exposed water to the North, to the South and to the SW which allows the winds to gather speed. Also there is a small underwater hump out in the middle of the mouth of this bay. There is also an underwater saddle that extends out from the North shoreline at the mouth of the bay to the SW for about 100 yards. The end of that saddle or pensula ends in an island that is exposed when the water levels are below 533 to 532 ft asl. So in the early spring you can see the exposed land with the stump beds on the edge of the island.

[Moose1am]

Continued from page 1 above:
I figure that the crappie are moving along the old river channel and then run into the bend in the river that has an outside bend right next to the island's shallow water. They follow the islands countours into the bay and then run into all that standing timber in 12ft of water and spend time feeding up and staging in the timber waiting for the water in the back of the bay or along the North shoreline to warm up. This water is faily stained so I am not sure exactly just how deep these big crappie actually spawn. Do they spawn in 2ft of water or 10ft of water. I don't really know. I need to fish the shallower water more often in the spring to figure this out. I have only fished the shallow water of this bay once in the spring of 2003 and didn't really catch anything. I fished that old roadbed and the bridge area that is exposed. But the old road bed that has the bridge was out of the water that spring on April 2, 2003. I need to find the lake elevation at that time to figure out more about this spot. I think it was at app 533ft asl or maybe 532. I do know that it was very low that day. I started fishing Dumpling Creek after reading the fishing help information on the Fishing Hot Spot's map of Patoka Lake. There is a section on the back of the map that describes about 50 different fishing spots on the lake and one of them talked about dumping creek for crappie. Then I read on the Crappie USA tournament results page that some of the biggest crappie caught at the tournament were caught up in the old Patoka Lake and Little Patoka Lake River channel which includes the Dumpling Creek area. So in April 2003 I packed up the truck with camping gear and hauled my boat up there to fish that area. It was my first time fishing and launching from Walls Boat Ramp and I was really surprised by all the standing timber. I mean there is flooded standing timber all the way from the Boat Ramp up river to Kings Bridge and then beyond. I never knew exactly where the old river channel went until I went up there fishing with Larry from Southern IN. Larry gave me the maps and he had these maps since the lake was built and he knows this area like the back of his hand. I always thought that the river channel flowed though the open areas (ie areas where you can't see the trees sticking out of the water) but no that is not the case. The cleared area are flats and the river channel runs right though all the trees that are still standing and sticking up out of the water several feet. If you go to the web site of Tim Gibson and look at some of his photos on his web site you can get an idea of how many trees there are still standing in the lake. Tim Fishes this lake for a living and he fishes this area in the spring for bass and big crappie. I have a tape that I got off the TV one day which Shows Tim and two of the guys from the Raghorn New TV show. The show has tim taking the guys from the floating cabins at Patoka Lake to some good fishing holes where Tim has some brush piles. They show these three guys catching nice slabs by casting to the brush piles. I am not sure where in the lake the guys are fishing but it's in fairly clear areas without a lot of standing timber.

I find that it's much harder to find the crappie when they have so many trees to choose from and I feel that one must put some brush piles or something differnet in and amounst the trees to help concentrate the crappie where you can find them. If not you can spend days searching though all the trees and never find the crappie. You may be on the right spot but at the wrong time and the crappie may not bite even though they are there. You would have to be at the right spot at the right time to locate the big slabs. Also the slabs are older fish at least 5 years old and they didn't get that big and get that old by being dumb. They are easily spooked so you must be very quiet and use a delicate presentation. That is something I am learning the hard way. The slip bobber setup helps to catch those bigger fish in the shallower water as you can stand back a ways and cast the slip bobber and jig out away from the boat. When you use a very lightweight and small bobber. Bets foam bobbers which are about 1" long and about 1/2" in diameter and weight hardly nothing and are hollow inside. I get them at Wal-mart and they come 5 or so to a small package. I use them with 1/16oz jigs but they should work better with 3/16 oz jigs. You can even tell if a crappie just slowly inhales the jig and stands still as the weight will be taken off the bobber and the bobber will suddenly pop up a few cm and fall over on it's side. The weight of the jig will make the bobber stand up vertically in the water and about half way sunk. But when a crappie take the jig and does not swim away the weight of the jig is taken off the bobber and you can tell with these finess bobbers. You have to have good eyesight when the bobber is cast out away from the boat. If I had better eyesight I would detect more bites. You also can cast this setup out away from the boat and let the jig slowly sink below the bobber. I use 6lb test line and the friction between the line and the inside of the foam bobber helps to slow the jigs desent. I use minnow head shaped lead head jigs and they seem to swirl downwards in a spiral. The only bad thing about this bobbers is that after a while the line cuts a grove in the top part of the bobber and that can cause the line to stop going though the bobber and the jig won't sink at all. To solve this problem I added some clear fingernail polish to the very top hole on the bobbers to harden up that area of the foam so as to prevent the line from cutting a grove in the bobber. I also will put on a new bobber is the old one gets a grove in it. That allows the jig to fall at the right rate. Drop rate of the jig head is critical in getting those big old smart shy slabs to grab your jig. This is finess crappie fishing at it's finest and I learned this method from on of the Crappie USA pros. This summer I had abandonded this method and fished the deeper waters using the drop shot vertical jigging method. But in the spring and fall when the crappie come back into the shallow water. Water under 10ft deep the slip bobber setup can be deadly and you may catch bigger fish. I know that my biggest crappie this fall have come to me using the slip float fishing setup with the Chartruse tail and black bodies jigs.

Find a spot on a bend in the River channel where there is deep water next to shallow water and there is standing timber and or a creek channel and river intersection and you have a good spot. An old road way (gravel ) that crosses a river bed or creek channel and that leads from shallow water all the way to the deeper water can also be good. A long point that comes out from the mouth of a bay on the North side of the bay can be a great point. points that come out and cause a break in the current can also hold big schools of crappie and bass. Underwater humps with stumps can also hold crappie. And don't forget to check the flats that surround the old river channels at times for those big slabs.

I wish I had the secrete to finding the crappie in lakes that are full of timber but I don't. I found one spot by talking to a fishermen and he explained to me where the fish were located and how to catch them. Without that information I would still be searching for the fish. This spot has produced my biggest crappie and at times (JUNE) the smaller crappie can come into these trees and you can catch hundreds of them in a day. I took my mom up there once in June 2003 and we caught so many 8" white crappie in one day that we got tired of hauling them in. That day was a calm day and we had a blast. Just wish that they were the big slabs but that was not the case. I need to go up there and fish that area in March this next spring and see if the big fish are there that time of the year. I didn't go there this March because it was so cold and rainy this last spring but this next spring I will be ready to talking that job if all goes well. I know have the artic warm weather insulated coveralls and insulated boots that are needed to fish in that cold weather. I will report on how that goes next year is possible.

[TAE73]

I bet your fingers are hurting after typing that, hate to seen if the power go out right at the end it. You have some good information, I would also add fish the trees that you cant see.. those are the ones that people dont see unless they take the time to find a depth finder.

[Moose1am]

There is a limit of 1000 words or characters and I had over 1600 characters types and tried to post and got the warning message that I went over the limit. LOL I copied the text to a wordpad doc and saved it to disk. Then I came back into Crappie.com and copied one half of the word dock at a time and pasted it into TWO crappie.com messages so as not to loose what I spend 30 minutes thinking about and typing out. Wish there was not a limit on the text sometimes. Sometimes I have a lot of free time on my hands and a lot to say. I switched to one of those ergonimic type MS keyboards a few years ago to prevent getting the carpel tunnel disease. Repetative motion can cause lot of pain in the wrists but these new ergomomic type key boads helps prevent that by letting my elbows be outside my hands and my forearms are tilted towards each other. Before my elbows had to be held tight to my body and the wrists were croocked. So today I can type a lot faster and longer with this new keyboard.

Thanks and I hope that the information is useful to you and others.

[Roberta]

Man, Moose, you don't really expect me to try to read all that on a small computer screen through trifocals, do you?

We fish standing timber at Rush Run a lot. The lake has crappie, but we haven't found them. Anyway, we tie the boat up to a cluster of branches near one of the points where there's good current to fish for big gills. We drop small jigs or a fly tied below a small piece of shot straight down until we hit bottom or a branch and reel up slowly. You'll know when you find "the zone".
We use the same method when fishing for rainbows through the ice.

The best trees at this lake have many branches. We are actually tying up in the top of the old trees. The branchless trunks that dot other parts o fthe lake will hold a solo bass, but not much else. This lake is clear to three or four feet in summer, so fish tend to stay at ten or more feet, except at dusk.Then they come up to feed on bugs and you can catch them right off the surface. - Roberta