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04/26/2016 Lake Camanche Crappie Report
Arrived at 6:30 a.m. and was greeted with a chilly yet beautiful no wind morning. The lake is 90% full and water visibility that day was around 6 feet. The concrete ramp is still under construction and had to launch on dirt north of the park. As we cruised over to my little secret crappie cove, I marked tons of large schooling fishes at 45 feet near the cliffs right below the campground using 2dswitchfire mode. Pretty sure they were trout.
We pulled crappie crankbaits at 1.5 mph and kept landing bass after bass. Majority were over 12” and all released. We spider rigged plastics at different depths and still no crappie. Finally at 10 a.m., we switched over to bobber rigs and I caught one jet black male in 5 foot (see photo). Pulled him out and he was squirting like crazy. It was then that we started seeing a few males swimming around. They were nesting and easily spooked.
At 11 a.m., the sun was over our head but winds picked up to 15 mph. Using side imaging, I located a sunken tree in 20ft of water barely 100ft away from the spawning flat. The tree was full of bream and crappies. I even dropped down an Ebay underwater fishing camera and watched them suspend on top of the tree. Unfortunately, they would not touch anything we drop. Too bad live minnows are not allowed in this lake because they would have been perfect for this situation.
Winds got stronger and we headed back to the dock. On our way back, I decided to drag cast masters at 30ft. Egg sinker followed by a swivel, 5ft liter with a cast master. Counted my line pulls to 30ft and slow drag to the ramp. Lone and behold, we got hit within minutes. A big healthy 2 pounder trout on a 4 pound high vis crappie line. LOL. Only at Camanche folks! These are stock trout’s, so they suck at fighting. Feels like pulling a small channel cat, sort of like dragging a log to the boat. It was one after another. We ended up loading the boat and hiked over to the cliff and limited on trout before noon on some 2 year old power bait in my bag.
This is one thing I like about Lake Camanche. They charge an arm and a leg to enter, but they do a good job stocking their trout, catfish, and bass. We may have had a bad crappie day, but it has been a long time since I have had trout for dinner and it was tasty!
BTW, I saw Nick the informative fisherman’s black tundra there. Did not get a chance to talk to him but I am sure they caught a ton of bass for his youtube shows.
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