Understanding milfoil, pondweed, and algal blooms.

[ChrisCarter]

During the summer, its common to find fish under these aquatic plants. Granted they make the water around them clearer, but its pretty difficult to see what is under those weeds from the surface, best thing to do is stick the bait in that water and see what bites. But I want to try and narrow down the list of what could be under the weeds to more of what can i expect under those weeds. More so during the spring/spawn. I have found over the past couple years, i tend to catch more fish from lakes with aquatic plants lining the shore than i do from lakes that have more rock and branches. Plus i tend to not lose so much tackle with the weeds, its just a lot messier to clean up.

Last year i targeted an area that was rocky, pretty good drop off 10 to +20 feet, but was prone to high north winds. I found crappie on the beds there, but not many, and size was lacking. It dawned upon me that the particular shore can't be the only place those crappie spawn at. My focus this year might be the south side of the lake. Key differences are 1) More cover and by that I mean more submerged timber and aquatic plants such as milfoil, pondweed and algal blooms. 2) No dropoffs and not as deep, roughly 2 - 8 feet deep, isolated spots around 15 feet. 3) Prone to the warm south wind, but sheltered from the colder north wind.

During the summer time i usually pull bluegill and sunfish from the south side of the lake, sometimes bass with it being so shallow and very weedy. So I'll go against logic of fishing near the rocks or the pier near the deeper dropoffs and focus more on the south side where the shallower water is.

[Eager Beaver]

The water warms up on the NW coves first in the Spring! That is the water you want to target first. Then as the water warms and temps raise a little you can try other areas of the lakes. Hit the docks in the Spring pretty hard or look for a stream coming into a lake. On Walnut Creek Lake the channel ledge comes to within 3 ft of the surface and the Crappie will spawn on it later in the Spawning Season. EB

[ChrisCarter]

In the case of Walnut Creek and Wehrspann, the deepest portions of the lake are on the north side near the dam. Pretty sure both have 1 inlet stream and that's on the south side where its more shallow. When there is 20 plus at the pier, I tend to want a backup area.

I'll definitely hit the inlet streams hard if we have a rainy spring.