Confined open water????

[ccm]

Hi,
I have been reading "Here's Crappie Fishing 101-For Newbies", in the 2012 Articles on the front page of this forum and have a question. The article is written by Special K and he refers many times to confining your search to "confined open water". I read his description of this phrase but still am not sure what he means.

Would like to get some opinions on what he is trying to tell me.

Thanks

[Special K]

Thanks for the question ccm. Let me try to explain the phrase "Confined Open Water".

Successful anglers have known for a long time that most fish species like to relate to what is known as “confined open water”— these are the places or interfaces between the open waters of the main-lake basin, and the lakes’ structure features such as underwater points, bars, shoals and reefs. These confined open water areas provide a myriad of benefits for crappies by offering everything from soft silt bottoms that harbor food to other structures such as ledges, cuts, roadbeds, railway beds, creek channels, river channels, underwater saddles and humps, (just to name a few), along which crappies tend to hold, suspend, travel and forage. Areas of such (structure features) confined open water are usually easily seen on structure maps and are very important because these areas actually make up (only) about 20% of total main lake open waters. Hopefully, you are starting to see how things are beginning to narrow down considerably, as to the areas on which you should concentrate your year-around efforts when fishing for crappies?



The importance of such areas really becomes more obvious when you view it in the context that crappies are migratory school fish that are most at home in large lakes, rivers and reservoirs where they have lots of room to roam and can freely forage. Schools of crappies (however seasonal) can cover several miles a day back and forth when on the move or could hold in an area and be quite content for some periods. Schooling crappies will usually tend to use the same migration routes along these structure features day after day and year-after-year no matter what time of the year it is. That’s right, crappies only school at certain times of the year and where you find schooling crappies this fall and winter, you will very likely find them in the same place next year and the year after, at about the same time. Sounds easy enough doesn't it?

Crappies whether schooling or scattered will be found mostly on submerged creek channels, drop-offs, and submerged river channels, stretches of sunken timber or stumps, rock formations, shoal edges and even featureless flats that are at the proper depths for the time of year that you are fishing depending upon the time of year. Learning to rely on these very fundamental migratory instincts and understanding where and at what depth to look for crappies at certain times of the year can easily set the stage for year after year of crappie fishing success more than any other one thing that you can do to consistently find, pattern and catch crappies.

I hope this helps you to better understand what I meant by the phrase "Confined Open Water". If you have other questions... please feel free to shoot me a pm.
Thanks again, Wayne (aka Special K)