Rocky Fork 9/18-9/19

[mbk]

My dad and I went to Rocky Fork Lake yesterday. We fished afternoon to dark, then morning to about 1pm today.

Not ideal fishing conditions... Storms had just moved out and water temps were in low 80s. We wanted to explore the lake and that we did. We fished near the docks at the lower end of the lake. We didn't make it too far to the upper end but fished from the dam all the way down past the 2 big coves at mid lake. We really didn't know what we were doing as we hadn't been there in 30 years.

Having fished EF so much, I was surprised at the differences. Namely the heavy grass all along the shoreline. Plus, it's a pretty shallow lake compared to EF.

First day was pretty slow. Seemed that way for everybody. We caught most all our fish on the edge of grass. Several bluegill (on crappie jigs and minnows) and some medium-sized crappie. Largest crappie was about 9.5".

Today, we fished the timber in the coves with very poor results. Tried trolling. Nothing. Saw several people drifting on the points at the coves and catching a few and we tried that. We finally found some brush, near grass, about 25 yards offshore and things heated up. We probably caught 30-40 crappie in 2-3 hours in this one spot. They were in about 10-15' water, a few feet off the bottom.

80% were black crappie. Still, nothing huge. We released them all but I could have had a good mess over 9". A few of them were over 10" but none over 11". I was hoping to hook into some bigger ones, but all in all we did ok.

Saw tons of fish busting shad in the shallows in the grass but would need more time to figure out how to properly fish it. Don't know when I'll go back again, but very nice lake.

[crappiemax]

Nice report. I liked the lake the few times we got to fish it this year and I plan to fish it a lot more next year. It's way different than EF.

[mbk]

Nice report. I liked the lake the few times we got to fish it this year and I plan to fish it a lot more next year. It's way different than EF.

Yeah to clarify... Where we finally found the crappie was out in the main part of the lake. Couldn't catch anything decent back in any of the coves. Maybe it was just that time of year where that's what is working and you would have more success in another month back in the coves.