Aaapril Crappie Fishing At Patoka Lake

[FishHuntAlways]

Hello Everyone. I am new on here( DON'T KNOW WHY CRAPPIES FISHING HAS BEEN MY FAVOTIRE FOR SEVERAL YEARS?? )Slow I guess? Anyway I uselly go down to southern In each spring and fish a few days and go on down to Kentucky Lake a few days and fish with a friend of mine who is blind. I have not been to Patoka in 30 years and was hopeing to pick up a little useable information. NOT looking for anyone favorite honey holes just some information to get started. I read a couple post on here and found out about baitshops to go to and not to go to. I am looking at the last weekend of April and would guess the spawn would be about over unless the weather it cool this spring. Knowing this is the second largest body of water( not counting Lake Michigan) there sould be several launch ramps. I have a 14ft wide alum. boat with a 40hp. and dont want to run all over the lake. would be nice to launch at a place and fish that area. The last time I was there we caught a bunch of 25" northern Pike. I would think that was sometype planting the state tried. I would also guess it didnt work? I read were shad is a problem ( Should make larger crappies?) . Anyway any infomation would be helpfull. Again not wanting anyone to give up a honey hole as to I would probley get back about once a year. I live up near the Michigan line in northern IN. Well a few miles from it anyway. Thanks Charlie Smith( [email protected])

[Patrick Vowell]

I would launch at painters creek and go towards the main lake. I believe it is the second cove before you get to the main lake. Go right and fish all of the standing timber inside and out. Slow down and vertical jig the brush piles. Hope this helps some. That area has some good fish when you catch em' bitin'. Alan creek is always good also. You will have to look for them though. Catch alot casting and free falling tubes. Also vertical jig the stick ups and any brush you can find. Stay moving for best results. Hope this helps.

[FishHuntAlways]

I would launch at painters creek and go towards the main lake. I believe it is the second cove before you get to the main lake. Go right and fish all of the standing timber inside and out. Slow down and vertical jig the brush piles. Hope this helps some. That area has some good fish when you catch em' bitin'. Alan creek is always good also. You will have to look for them though. Catch alot casting and free falling tubes. Also vertical jig the stick ups and any brush you can find. Stay moving for best results. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply! I will get a map of Patoka and look up painters creek and Alan creek. Charlie

[Moose1am]

Hey Patrick:

Hope you are well mate. I concour on your spot at Painters Creek. If you have a Hot Spot Fishing Map of Patoka you can see why that spot is good. I only have fished out of the Painter's Creek Boat launch one time back in late Sept of 2003. Well that is the only time I can remember right now. I may have fished it long ago when there were still Northern Pike and didn't know it as Painters creek. Back in the late 1970's when dad and I fished patoka for northern pike hoping to catch some of the walleye that were said to have been stocked we fished the Lick Fork area mostly.

Anyway there is a good creek that runs from the painter creek back into that bay. I fished there with a student from Arizona who was in the Purdue University Bass Fishing Club during the Purdue Club Patoka Lake tournament. I was a volunteer boat driver who didn't have to pay to fish. LOL I got my student onto one 14.8" bass which was just a bit short. We only caught one bass that day but it was after a cold front had passed though. It was my first time using my new Garmin eTrex Vista GPS with the Patoka Lake digital Fishing Hot Spot map installed. I got that CD the night before at Circuit City. Spent all night Saturday looking for that CD too. We caught our bass in that bay on the first cove on the left after you get into the Bay. The bay is one of the last bays in painter's creek before you enter the main lake section coming out of painters creek from the boat launch. It was very foggy that day and we didn't get out of painters creek until around 9 am as it took that long for the fog to lift. We had to check it at 3 pm so we didn't get to fish much of the lake. We fished most of Painters creek but were following many other boats. LOL I was in a small 16ft narrow john boat like boat and didn't want to tangle with the other boats that has 300 HP motors and were 20 ft in lenght.

That bay should warm up a lot in March as compared to some of the other main lake coves. It's got good exposure to the Sun and it's protected somewhat from the North winds. There is a creek channel running all the way from the very back of the bay to the painters creek. And the juction of those two is not that far from the junction of the painters creek channel and the old Patoka River channel. There are some good spots that are marked on the FHS maps in that area as well. Those are out in deeper water (30ft deep) and near the old town of Newton Steward. There are old building foundationa and huge underwater humps that are said to produce huge crappie. I have not fished those humps yet but will someday when I get the time and remember to check them out. It will have to be on a weekday as the lake has to be calm and there can't be too many water skiers and sea do running around when I am crappie fishing with jigs. LOL

Another good spot to check at that time of the year is dumplin creek. It's way up the old Patoka River near the Walls Boat Ramp. I found out about dumplin first by reading the fishing information on the FHS paper map. Then I found out that the two time winner of the crappie usa spring tournament fished that area to help him and his partner win the tournament with over 12 lbs of fish. That is pretty good for patoka lake's crappie.

Pat you, Larry, Tim and I all know of another good spot near the main lake that produces numbers of smaller crappie and a few big ones. But the Painter Creek site is very similar to the secrete site. Well it's not so secrete as I am sure that anyone that fishs with the guides will know the spot. I know that Tim Gibson frequents that spot a lot as evertime I was fishing it he would come into the bay going 40 mph and not shut down until he was within 100 yard of our boats. LOL . You have to get to that spot early in the morning to claim it. But the spot is big enough for 4 boats to fish as it's really an series of ditches that run out of the bay into the main river channel where the old river channel takes a big 180 deg bend. Anyone with a good map of the lake can find that spot on the map and know it's a good spot. Lots of deep and shallow water. And anyone with a brain knows that ditches were not farmed and should have lots of scrub trees or brush along it's banks when the lake was flooded.

Patoka lake is full of standing timber but most of that timber has now been in the water for over 30 years now and a lot of the limbs have rotted off the tree trunks. So the brush piles are a good spot to attract the crappie. The crappie must feel safer in an amongst those small submerged brushy type trees. You can follow the ditches and see the brush on a good depth finder screen. They land will go from shallow at the bank to about 10ft then drop off into the ditch for about 20ft and then back up to 15 ft again on the other side. And there are multiple ditches running though the area that converge together out near the mouth of the bay and end up going into one big short creek that dumps in to the main river channel at the bend. It's a good spot to fish when the wind is out of the South. A north Wind will blow bait fish into the bay but make boat control very difficult. Boat control is easier in that bay with the winds out of the South or the West. Even an East wind would not be so bad. There are spots on both sides of that bay actually. Someone or many someones has been dumping brush into the lake over the last 30 years too. There could even be some crappie condos down there in places ..

Happy fishing and have a good trip guys.

Another spot is the old creek that runs parallel to highway 64 by the end of Lick Fork. You can launch at the South end of Lick Fork right by the highway and then head East from the Boat ramp and fish that old creek bed that runs East. It's a straight shot and you have the highway on your right hand side all the way there. You can even stop and turn right out of the bay and fish the very south end of lick fork as you can go under the bridge and fish that small area to the south

Get yourself a Fishing Hot Spots paper map at the Bait shop or online before you go and study the map. There are locations marked on the map and descriptions about each of 50 different spots described on the back of the map. It's what you are looking for

I would launch at painters creek and go towards the main lake. I believe it is the second cove before you get to the main lake. Go right and fish all of the standing timber inside and out. Slow down and vertical jig the brush piles. Hope this helps some. That area has some good fish when you catch em' bitin'. Alan creek is always good also. You will have to look for them though. Catch alot casting and free falling tubes. Also vertical jig the stick ups and any brush you can find. Stay moving for best results. Hope this helps.

[FishHuntAlways]

Moose1am what web site would I find a map for Patoka?
Being around 250 miles from the lake I wont be near one of the local baits shops till April and would like to get a plan in advance. Thanks, Charlie

[Patrick Vowell]

www.fishinghotspots.com

[FishHuntAlways]

Thanks!!

[GABoy]

Moose1am what web site would I find a map for Patoka?
Being around 250 miles from the lake I wont be near one of the local baits shops till April and would like to get a plan in advance. Thanks, Charlie

Another good website is www.waterproofmaps.com