Not disappointed fishing a lake I hadn't been to in over 55 years

[Spoonminnow]

My parents took us to this lake that had an indoor roller skating rink, picnic areas with grills and swimming. Place is totally overgrown and unrecognizable and since I never fished it as a kid, didn't have a clue what fish the lake held.

First thing when fishing a new water is to note the bottom contours while casting lures shallow and deep. Fish quality is poor, quantity pretty good: 58 last week with 66, 43 and 29 fish on different days within two weeks.
What makes this lake unique unlike any I've fished before are the numbers of fish that have been caught in water 4.5' or less. The flats have very few weed and some areas near shore adjacent to those flats can be 4' deep or less under overhanging branches. Some shores drop fast to 8' or more, some hold fish, many not.

When a small lake has little fishing pressure (at least to my knowledge), lure design variety fish strike is always a plus. Some lure designs I wanted to confirm their versatility fishing different water such as this wacky rigged mini-stick (Note the clear plastic color used; crappie on the left, bass on the right):


A tried using a 1 1/4" stubby tail grub and did very well catching 3 species:




As usual the Crappie Magnet tail design caught fish:


...even this +3 lb sucker couldn't resist:


Tried a mythiolate colored stubby stick and did well:


Because of the lake's sad history and zero protection, few legal size fish were caught so far. But hey, it's quiet and away from everything - more so during the week and a challenge to know better. Amazing it took so long to rediscover a water I had fond summer memories of so many years ago - and by accident no less !

[Crestliner08]

I have a similar small fish "get away" that I can go to in a few minutes. Good fun when you only have an hour or two to fish.

[Spoonminnow]

Same here and sooooo true !