There is a lake I fish on a few days every winter near Itasca State Park that has consistently provided me a great dusk bit for crappies. In about 10-15 feet of water the crappies move in generally about a half hour before sunset and leave a half hour after sunset. This is the first year where I took the time and a lot of energy to figure out where exactly these crappies are coming form.(This lake is pretty unused so it doesn’t have much in terms for structural maps).Now, this lake has an hour glass shape with the two ends just being big bowls that drop down to roughly 35 feet. The narrow part of this hour glass shaped lake is about 200 yards long and maybe 100 yards wide with an extra 50 yards of flooded timber on its north side. This narrow part has a average depth of 15 feet with a 17 foot channel running down its middle and the flooded timber being around 5 feet deep. What I thought in years past was that these crappies were migrating in from the deeper basins at dark to feed. But, why would a predator be so far away from its main food source? In this particular case being bugs and small bait fish in the shallows. Fish like all other animals want to use as little energy as possible to ensure their survival. So swimming from the deep water basins to the flooded timber just seems like a big waste of energy. So, this year I decided to figure out where these fish were located during the day as well as why. I started a grid pattern in the area i usually fish. I would drill 5 holes, one every 15 feet, then I would go back and check the depth and see if fish were being marked. It took me roughly 4 hours and I don’t know how many holes but I found where these fish were during the day and more importantly why they were there. So picture this narrow part of the lake as being a spoon, the handle being the 17 foot deep channel and the bowl of the spoon being a 19 foot deep depression at the end of the channel. This depression rose sharply on two sides to about 6 feet with one of sides actually being a point that extends across the narrow cutting off the channel from the deeper part of the lake. Due to my line always moving to one side of the hole I assumed that there was a current the flowed through the channel as well. My guess is that the fish were waiting in this depression during the day for the current to push food down to them and then at dusk they would become more active and move up into the shallows to better pursue their prey. Finding these fish during the day allowed me to catch a few more fish than I perviously had, as well as teaching me quite a bit about the structure of the lake. It took a couple hours and some hard work but it payed off. Fish won’t stray to far from food if they can’t help it, I’m not saying that the fish are going to bite when you find them during the the day but i hope it helps everybody land a few more fish than before! Tight lines!
January 11, 2016 at 12:05 am
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