Floating dock question....

[catchNgrease]

Short story

I sometimes fish with a friend who takes a very electronics approach to fishing. We were fishing Bear Creek in North East Alabama. It's a BCDA lake so Navionics hasn't mapped it. It was his second trip to this lake and my first. We began by using Garmins Quickdraw feature and rode for an hour at 10-15 mph mapping the water. As we rode we used Si set at 70 ft each side to mark structure. Then we rode back to some of the marked spots and passed over it with DI looking for fish. If we liked it we dropped the TM and the LS and began the Ketchn windmill approach till they stopped biting and we moved to the point of interest. I know I said LS isn't needed and yeah we could have used DI but LS just speeds things up if you have it.

34.280399322509766,-87.67259979248047

Fish On.

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[keeferfish]

Don't like talking about it

I have the answer but

Really don’t want to talk about it!

[ultraslab]

Used to fish Lanier a lot shooting docks pre-livescope and pre- good side imaging and the knowledge to use it. Lake has 10,000+ docks of which 1% hold fish consistently. That changes a little in the spring as fish move shallower. If you don't have or know how to use good electronics it's about spending time to learn your lake. I guarantee you you will find some docks that consistently hold fish and a hundred others that look just like it but don't. If you have side imaging as I read turn your range down so that when you scan the dock you can see the water in the black area not trying to pick them up on the bottom, if this makes sense. If I'm scanning a dock in 20' of water I will have my range at 30-40' and make a close pass, even less range on shallower docks. You will see them if they are there. Scott

[Brag]

Used to fish Lanier a lot shooting docks pre-livescope and pre- good side imaging and the knowledge to use it. Lake has 10,000+ docks of which 1% hold fish consistently. That changes a little in the spring as fish move shallower. If you don't have or know how to use good electronics it's about spending time to learn your lake. I guarantee you you will find some docks that consistently hold fish and a hundred others that look just like it but don't. If you have side imaging as I read turn your range down so that when you scan the dock you can see the water in the black area not trying to pick them up on the bottom, if this makes sense. If I'm scanning a dock in 20' of water I will have my range at 30-40' and make a close pass, even less range on shallower docks. You will see them if they are there. Scott

I was watching some videos this morning and came to the conclusion that this MAY be the issue with my failure to really be able to see them on sidescan. I often have it set at 100 or 120 feet in 20-30 feet of water and I think I need to set it to a lesser range. I'm going to work on it some this week, but greatly appreciate the help.

[ultraslab]

Yes sir and I also forgot to mention an important part in breaking down a big reservoir. I haven't even looked at your lake but try focusing on the feeder creeks coming into the lake vs. lower lake as the water will usualy have some color to it. I don't find near as many on average on docks with gin clear water. Since I don't fish there any more google Lake Sydney Lanier and look up 3 of the better feeder creeks or river from Clarks Bridge upward and Little River and Wahoo creek. Plenty of deep docks 25+ but lake almost always has some degree of color up that way. Only thing that will hurt you is when you get 3" of rain and water changes drastically overnight. Scott

[Ketchn]

set the si range at 40 or less and pass the dock very slowly at about 3 or 4 foot off the dock , as stated, simply deadly way to hit docks .

[Brag]

Yes sir and I also forgot to mention an important part in breaking down a big reservoir. I haven't even looked at your lake but try focusing on the feeder creeks coming into the lake vs. lower lake as the water will usualy have some color to it. I don't find near as many on average on docks with gin clear water. Since I don't fish there any more google Lake Sydney Lanier and look up 3 of the better feeder creeks or river from Clarks Bridge upward and Little River and Wahoo creek. Plenty of deep docks 25+ but lake almost always has some degree of color up that way. Only thing that will hurt you is when you get 3" of rain and water changes drastically overnight. Scott

Yep, so far I've concentrated on two of the longer creeks on the reservoir, one in the upper lake and one in the lower lake. I've caught some crappie on both of them, but not nearly enough to satisfy me or to think that I've got them figured out. I think I'm going to try to check out another of the longer, upper-lake creek systems this week as well and will start looking at hundreds of docks when time permits to see if I can find a few "good ones". Really appreciate everyone's help. It's not anything that I may not have in time figured out for myself, but getting some feedback and confirmation of some ideas is encouraging and helpful to me.

[Brag]

set the si range at 40 or less and pass the dock very slowly at about 3 or 4 foot off the dock , as stated, simply deadly way to hit docks .

I understand what you're saying and I'm reasonably well convinced that I've been setting my sidescan range way too long, but keep in mind that this is a deep reservoir and there would be places where I'd be in 30-40 feet of water (maybe more) as I passed the docks. My understanding is that if you are in 20 feet of water and you set your range/sidescan to 40 feet, that you get 20 feet of downscan until you hit the bottom and then 20 feet of sidescan after that. So hypothetically if I were in 40 feet of water and had my sidescan set to 40 feet, I wouldn't be able to see anything under the dock as I drove past, right? In that scenario, I'd need to set it to 50 feet to get 10 feet of scan under the dock or to 60 feet to get 20 feet of scan under the dock. I'll have to look when I'm on the water, but I think my Hook 2 Reveal unit goes in 20 foot increments, so I think only 40, 60, 80, 100, etc. as options, although I could be wrong.

[Brag]

I do really appeciate everyone's input, advice and thoughts. I had a lot of people tell me to just go fish Hartwell, Russell, Clark Hill or one of the other lakes (all primo Crappie lakes and not terribly far away, though not in my backyard either) and to forget about the Crappie on my "home lake", but I've been pretty stubborn and have refused to do that because I'm confident that for a really dedicated and smart angler, that Crappie CAN be caught here fairly regularly and some big ones. Now I'm even more excited to get out and get after it again. The only problem that I have is that I sometimes fish with other guys who don't particularly care about Crappie and just want to catch something (the lake is a very good Spotted bass lake), so they aren't as inclined as I am to patiently plug away for hours, hoping to catch a Crappie or three in the hopes of learning something on that particular day. I'll keep after it; I'm not going anywhere.......

[Brag]

I found your water it's a little bit South East of Salem. There is plenty of contour and structure on that water. Actually when I first looked at it I was overwhelmed. Beautiful place for sure.

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You're correct that there's plenty of structure in this lake and I should have said that COVER, not structure, is pretty limited. They cleared the trees before impounding the lake and other than junk that's thrown in there, there's not a lot of other cover (there are still a lot of stumps, but even those aren't available by the thousands). Not a ton of anglers residing on this lake, so there aren't anywhere near the number of brushpiles places as on other lakes in the area, for whatever reason.