Thread: Gatewood reservior crappie fishing

Originally Posted by panangler

Hi guys,

Any information on how to find crappie in the Gatewood reservior? Have never caught a crappie in my life, neither do my fishing buddies.

We have been trying to catch a crappie in the New River, the Claytor Lake and both turns out to be bad.

I have lived in this area all my life. There is crappie in Claytor and they are catchable. I fished Gatewood years ago and caught crappie there. We fished minnows under bobbers. It is a deep clear lake, we looked for laydowns and fished minnows around them. Gatewood is electric motor only and i think you have to rent their boats, I'm not sure if they have opened yet? We have been catching decent numbers at Claytor lately, on jigs. If DonG will chim in he has good information on this side of Virginia. I hope this helps.

I went to Gatewood two weeks ago. Was my first time there. Didn't catch a fish. Water temp was 49 degrees.

You can rent their boats...$25/day (includes boat, trolling motor, and battery), or bring your own boat. I took my solo canoe and the wind blew me around pretty badly. Will probably rent their boat next time. No gas motors allowed.

You can also camp for $15 - $20 a night.

That trip I used my fish finder for the first time. It did mark some fish, but they didn't want anything I threw at them.

Fishing on a lake was a new experience for me. I am used to floating a river and fishing in 1' - 8' of water. Gatewood is deep in places. A lot of the fish I found were hanging out in 20' - 23' of water.

I will probably go back there in a few weeks.

I'd make the trip to rural retreat over gatewood... I'll be at rural retreat tomorrow . Of course then again I've never fished gatewood

Let us know how it goes at RR. I also have never caught a crappie, and will probably be able to spend all day Sunday fishing. Rural Retreat is an option that I am looking at.

Thank you for your reply though. We have been Rural Retreat and caught several trout and a musky.

This is very very useful and I can see that you are very smart. I do believe you would do very well with lakefishing.

maybe we will try Claytor Lake too this weekend. What jigs are you using? 1/32, 1/24, 1/16 or even 1/8? Our fishfinder is not very good and we can only know if it's grass or rock bottom. We can't predict if there are crappie down the boat. Maybe we would try a new fishfinder but that's gonna be some more money.
I looked up what DonG posted and he mentioned several coves and pilers. We may give them a try next time.

Anyway, thank you guys so very much and I do appreciated it.

Rural Retreat wasn't to good fished it from the bank and caught 15 little crappie and 2 bluegill (all crappie were no more than 20 ft from bank)... The wind was wicked bad... On a side note we caught several trout at the trout pond... Here is an example of the little fellers caught today... Lol