Thread: fishin by smell

I was fishing a red beach lake in Sebring ,fl the other morning for crappies. The crappie bite was slow but I caught a very strong whiff of fish beds at one point. I had once fished with an old pastor of mine and he could pinpoint exactly where bream beds were from the smell. This was about the same. Now is the smell strongest right where the beds are or does the smell carry quite a ways? There was no debris like fish had been clearing that area but there were reeds to the rear of the area I passed and I had caught shellcrackers there before with nightcrawlers. Could I have smelled crappie beds or are they not as obvious? If I had some nightcrawlerss that day I might have dragged the bottom the bottom as an experiment . How do I pinpoint them without a really good fishfinder? I have one but it definitely won't give me that much detail.Oh yeah..the area is I was in was about 15 fow..the reeds are in about 3-5 ft fow with some pad cover.

Hard today!! I have a young friend killed in wreck while pulling his boat home from repair who. He always would lpitch out a couple of crickets along area he smelled the fish!! Usually you can get on lake during 6-9 am and locate gasses released from congregating fish!! Back when I was a MS Game Warden I could locate slat fish traps by idling the lake in the early morning on large reservoirs!!