cold water fishing

[fish-wva]

i fish in eastern ky and was wandering if you guys can give me some cold water (winter) fishing tips. i have never fished for crappie in the winter.

[sentrysam]

find'em,feed'em,but do it slow,ss

[GRIZZ]

and small

[Darryl Morris]

slow, small and deep -- if they're not deep there will be deep water close by.

[SpeckWick]

Look deep on river and creek channel breaks with cover. Don't count out shallow wood though. I caught them a month ago deep, 15-25 feet of water, 12 feet plus deep, then the weather and water got COLDER and I found them in 8-10 feet of water 4 feet deep on standing timber. Crappie are crappie any time of year. I always check some deep brush and trees first, but if that doesn't work, I'll pitch minnows to every standing tree in a cove if I have to. If you like to eat them, they never taste better than when their cold.

[sentrysam]

Hey Specwick,thats a good attitude my friend,I agree..eat what you catch and keep what you want to eat,release the rest,My Dad use to say ,leave a few fer seed...ss

[skeetbum]

I'm with the others and will add one more; take lots of colors. Lately I've caught fish on colors I've never done any good with before. one is pink. Good luck, let us know how you do.

[wvspec]

Try Elk Fork, just above Charleston, near Ripley. Had good luck there last winter.

[BleuGhill]

One potential problem with eastern KY lakes is that they don't all have threadfin shad, and because of this, the primary baitfish is either small gizzard shad or brook silversides. When this is the case (Paintsville Lake, Dewey Lake especially) the crappie are few in numbers and will be ridiculously small and skinny - and fishing there is nearly a waste of time.
Better to try Fishtrap, Yatesville or Cave Run...then go for the headwaters where the water has more color and (therefore) nutrients. Use minnows alone, or minnow and 1/32 oz. (hair or hackle) jig combo. Then follow SpeckWick's plan of attack, except that I would start shallow and eliminate the possibility of them being up on brush - then go searching in deeper water. In the shallow water pursuit, try to get where the sun hits the lake the most during these absurdly short sunlit periods here in the hills. The water might be warmer there. Murky water + sunlight + cover = better chance. Drop a GrouseFly weedless jig down in 'amongst' the thicket (same as where a rabbit or big buck might be ).

Having said that....I drove over to Dewey Lake just messing around a couple of days ago and took a rod with me. I threw out a blue/clear Southern Pro curly tail jig from the bank and slow-rolled it across the bottom and caught 3 little fellers bam-bam-bam next to a 10' dropoff near the edge of the bank. I was just playing around to cure boredom so that surely wasn't a carefully chosen lure ha ha. I got a charge out of it though! The fish were holding on some kind of snag....because I got hung up and broke off on whatever was down there. Felt like a crappie stud when I left.

Right now, in all likelihood, fish will be just off the bottom. So, that leaves really only one strategy remaining (just in case they're not shallow): if you don't have brushpiles marked already, you'll have to spend a lot of valuable fishing time just looking for structure/cover on the bends of creek channel or on points with your depth finder. If you see sumpin' down there, drop a tandem minnow rig (with weight on the end of the line) and let it scoot across the bottom slowly. If no crappy, you might snag yourself a big ol' wiper or sumpthin' haha. They're pretty good eatin' too!

Sounds like I got it all figgered out like some kinda head-knockin' croppy pro huh?:rolleyes: I wish hehe. I could probably go out today and not come back with enough fish to make the grease stink!:D

- Bleughill -

[kycreek]

I would say deep also, this time of year. But just a few weeks ago we had good luck in the laydowns 4 ft deep. What part of the state you fish?