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On my home waters I have done a lot of crappie fishing. I have a technique that seems to always work for me. I call it the rule of 17. It simply means that on my waters, the crappie will be at either side of 17 fow by 5 foot. I fish 12-21 foot deep and they always seem to be there. This a is summer pattern though. Any thoughts? Anyone else discover the same?
Works for me, 17- 22' here.
I don't have rule per say ......but that sounds like it would work on some spots .....one lake I hit often is only about 15 on average in the deepest water though ,so in that spot my rule would be say bout 10 ........lol
Most the lakes here I fish would bt 10'+ under mud.
On lakes that deepest water is 40 to 60 ft if I was a vertical fisherman I would concentrate on those depths. Especially if you concentrate on those depths around structure and especially structure on a sharp gradient. A brush pile on a ledge or hump at those depths that is next to shallow and deeper water,or those depths around a steep point with suspended fish...guy can make a living there. But I have caught a lot of fish in 25 to 35 ft of water also if the structure and oxygen are right. I don't over look anything if it shows fish ...or the structure looks good...I have caught fish hanging out around rock ledges and some brush that the fish are hidden pretty well in it.
Of course I got hooked on cast fishing to shallower structure years ago and don't vertical as much as I use too. I catch several thousand fish a year in water 2 to 10 ft deep now in lakes that have 40 to 60 ft deepest water. It's basically almost two completely different types of fishing. Some days there will be almost no fish were I want to fish...but at the depths you're talking about there will nearly always be some fish.On the other hand some days the fish will have moved shallow and a guy fishing vertical in 17 ft of water catching little or nothing while some guy is casting jigs in 6ft of water wearing them out can make you feel pretty silly.Of course the reverse is also true.
The best thing to do is concentrate on the type of fishing you enjoy most and dabble in the other occasionally to keep your options open.
The way I am I might just one day flip flop and decide I want to go back to mostly vertical fishing...you never know. I also will not waste my time trying to force a method if the conditions are not there for it. Grass can change everything...good grass beds in a lake can shift the fish to an average depth which is shallower than previously on that same body of water. The grass is such a fish attractant and with the typical sunlight penetration the grass has trouble growing below about 10 to 15 ft on average...this creates a condition which shifts a large portion of the fish to stay shallower around that grass much more of the year. When you been fishing as long as I have you get to witness the transformation of waters sometimes from one predominate species,structure,etc. to another.Time passes...things change...sometimes.
I don't troll or spider rig....cast and retrieve / bobber/slip bobber/ vertical single or maybe two poles at most.
The spots I fish with this are coves that are 30-40 fow. Huge oak trees so thick that the boat is constantly over large branches. I drop slip bobbers with minnows or dip in around the trunk and branches. Almost always 15-23 feet edpp gets you into the fish. I have actually arrived at a tree at 6am and headed for the ramp at 4pm and never left the original tree. In the low morning light the fish are at 15ish fow. As light increases they move toward the 22 fow mark.Quote:
Originally Posted by doggone
I forgot to mention standing timber...which is odd considering how much time I have spent fishing it. Well like I said,time passes...and your mind starts to go LOL. Standing timber is the predominant structure in some lakes. But you live long enough even it plays out some. I fish some places now that when I was a kid it looked like a forest in the water...now its just a bunch of stumps you hang your boat and some are laying on the bottom or rotted away.