Crappie bed question.

[TapOut64]

I've made two trips with my new 997 side imager and have found quite a few fish beds in 16' of water at different locations. Water clarity at this lake is usually around 2'-3'. Do you think that any of these beds are from crappie? If not, what species do you suppose made them?

[TapOut64]

Here's a couple snapshots.

[Cane Pole]

Based on your settings, they were pretty good sized fishes.

[Darryl Morris]

If they are beds, I'd have to say bream, maybe. But I don't think they're beds at all. The first thing I noticed is there is no cover, no rocks, nothing, etc. That's not to say crappie won't spawn away from cover but it's certainly not the norm. Plus, notice the color contrast where the pock marks are. The density in color is darker which tells me it's deeper, like a channel or ditch that is about 25' wide. What made them could be a bunch of things - water level change, current, raccoons when the water was down, I don't know, maybe just a rough bottom. Also, check out the length of them. You are scanning out 148 and 135-foot both left and right. At that range the length (only the segments that are running away from the boat, not including the segments that are running parallel to the boat) of the bedded area in both snapshots exceeds 100-foot. That's one heck of a field of fish beds. I'd make a mental note and not forget it for sure. Fish it in the spring and see what it produces. If it is fish beds they are doing it in the bottom of the channel.

[stumpbumpers]

Looks like a golf ball... interesting to say the least.

My fish finder isn't working... hhmmmm.... might hav to get side imaging.

[england]

Do we have a fisheries biologist that is a member here
I would like to know what that is myself

[slabbandit]

I agree with Darryl. They seem to only be associated with the creek channel or ditch that is in the area.
The lake that I fish mainly only has a 1 to 2 foot visibility and our fish seem to prefer spawning depths down to about 5 feet. As a matter of fact I rarely have to fish 15 feet deep even in the cold of winter.
I doubt very seriously if they were crappie beds based on the visibility that you described. But I too would sure like to know what they are.
Awesome snapshots by the way!

[Jerry Blake]

I don't think they are crappie beds - I don't think Crappie make much of a depression if any at all. They don't have the typical honeycomb pattern of bream beds either. It does appear that they are in a channel with a softer bottom than the surrounding area and that's a bit unusual for bream too. You might post it on the Side Imaging Yahoo Group and see what folks there think. They're are a lot of images there that you can check out too - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sideimaging/.