Finding crappies in pressured man-made lake

I’ve spent the last couple weekends fishing a widely popular 800 acre man made lake in my area. I know that it holds a good population of 9-11 inch crappies, I have gotten many during the open water months….but significantly less during ice season. Today I was catching lots of little 4″ crappies mixed in with scads of similar sized bluegills that were hovering around a brush pile. I used my zoom on my Marcum LX-5 and could tell that occasionally there were larger red marks down there in 10-15 feet of water hugging the bottom. The fishing report by our local game and fish department stated the fish were being caught in 15-20 feet of water on woody or rock structures placed on the bottom when the lake was last drawn down 8-9 years ago. I drilled probably 50 holes today looking for active larger crappies. While it was a blast catching numbers, I’m on the hunt for keepers. Any tips to possibly put me on the larger fish???

Feeding time. The big guys may be picking a different feed time. Is there a night/evening bite?

I sometimes caught fish like at 3-4 am in the morning/night and they were bigger fish. Not another person on lake.

That’s kinda what my other thought was, that they feed at dawn/dusk. I heard rumors of guys having success with minnows after dark. I’ve tried it in the past, staying until the park (where the lake is located) closes with no success. I also wonder too if they maybe do not wander out over deeper water nearby- a basin bite perhaps?

Using bottom lock? Often the larger fish will use shallower water over deeper water, especially if small sunfish/perch/shad are hugging bottom. If you’re using bottom lock you may be locking out any fish moving thru higher up and those are the ones you maybe want to target.

Basin!

I think I’d watch last years episode of IDO where they were fishing the cribs…

I considered that as well…..time to purchase a camera, haha.

I have a Marcum LX-5, I can zoom anywhere in the water column. The thin line feature helps a little in sorting out larger and smaller targets….but unfortunately the little gills out speed the larger fish it seems, haha.

In highly pressured lakes try fishing after dark. Use tip downs with minnows and then jig with a rattle spoon and a minnow head. This will allow you to spread out and cover a larger area.

Start in the deep basin area and work shallow, try to find any place where there are inside or outside turns where the basin comes up.

You do not have your location shown, if you are in one of the states that allow a bunch of lines you can really spread out using Tip Downs.

Here in Iowa, we are allowed only 2 lines. We can purchase a third, but I generally don’t get to do much tip-up fishing unless I am chasing pike or walleyes in far flung corners of the state. I could do the tip downs, I have done deadstick rods for crappie and walleye in the past on other lakes. I’ve fished the lake after dark-it’s kinda funny, the lake gets kind of spooky quiet, people usually don’t stick around after dark. The main spot that I fish is a shallower bay that has access to the main channel through the body of water, which is among the deepest spots in the lake. I may try moving out further to the “inside turn” there where it gets deeper. Most of the brush piles sit in 10-15 feet of water, but nearby it drops off rapidly from 20 feet to 40 feet.