Reply With QuoteYou have roaming fish on about every lake.
they are brush piles on those lakes that hold plenty of fish as well.
build it / put it out and they will come.
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Minnow
big 4 corp lakes differences from ky lake
I have a couple questions for yall that fish Sardis, enid and or Grenada and in the past arkabutla. im from around Memphis but moved up to right near Kentucky lake before I started crappie fishing so I learned how to crappie fish up there, and even before the livescope we would find brush piles or man made stakebeds and sit on top of them or troll thru the smaller crappie condo kinda structures, but lately I've come back down here to MS and went to Sardis and noticed guys in the middle of the bays? or Creeks maybe I should call them, but anyway 12 or 15 ft deep fishing for roaming fish, the fish seemed to be like from 5 to 12 ft deep is what they said. anyway my question is why do the crappie behave so differently than the same species in ky lake or is it just that there isn't as much structure in Sardis while the water is drawn down now. and most importantly if I theoretically sunk some Xmas trees or made some big 12fr by 12ft stake beds like they have in ky lake in 15ft of water in Sardis would the crappie pile up on them like they do in ky?? I've fished a lot of different places and I always look for brush but it seems like the best crappie lakes in the country are not the same as what I'm used to. any thoughts on this? thanks
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You have roaming fish on about every lake.
they are brush piles on those lakes that hold plenty of fish as well.
build it / put it out and they will come.
Too blessed to be stressed!
Minnow
thats what I was thinking, I usually make stake beds in about 10-15ft of summer pool water but in Sardis I don't know because of the extreme water level changes but for winter I guess at the mouth of the bays at about 15ft would be good to drop some Xmas trees, I see that main lake Creek channel on the graph. I notice usually in other lakes the structure is put where to creeks meet or the bend of a creek channel. I guess I'll just have to experiment with it. and why doesn't Sardis have those asian carp? not complaining I hate those things but I thought everything had them by now
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Big Crappie (>12") are generally not "schooling fish", they're not particularly scared of other predator fish, so they go wherever they want to go. Now, during the spawning season, they may be more concentrated in certain areas, but once that duty is fulfilled ... they go where they want, and many times that's out in the open water chasing Shad. They may be on a brushpile, downed tree, stump, or around standing timber ... and at times there may even be a school of smaller fish hanging around that same piece of cover. At other times they may be on another piece of cover that's a short distance away from the cover the school of smaller fish is on.
That's myopinion on the matter.
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"Why doesn't Sardis have those Asian carp?"
On the upper lake?
People catch shad at the outlet tunnel and bait lines on the upper lake. They don't know the difference between Asian carp and shad.
They are in every outlet channel of the Big 4.
Enid does it's habitat day the first Saturday of February. Lot of volunteers, guess to be 80 to 100 if not more plus MDWFP and COE employees. Lot of extras that provide lunch.
The last habitat day at Sardis that I know of was about 8 years ago. There were 2 of us C.C members, a couple of MDWFP and about 10 COE employees. I carried a load of Christmas trees to Holiday lodge last after talking with the manager. Leave the there, we will put them out somewhere. Will you have a habitat day in February? Not that we plan on.
Nader has moved their habitat day to the first or second Saturday of December. If they post it on their website/facebook it's usually during that week.
Habitat is mostly staked out on the flats. People don't like getting to close to the water because of mud.
Minnow
its sometimes hard to tell the difference between shad and Asian carp when they are young, I know that they have all but destroyed Kentucky lake and Barkley. my dad used to love to fish tunica and I've been told by some local guys that its not worth fishing nowadays? I hope they can keep the carp outta the corp lakes. I just think people don't realize how bad they truly are
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On another fishing forum years ago we had a KY commercial fisherman that told us how life had changed since the Asian carp took over his fishing spots. I found it interesting to hear what he said. Got to learn something new. Told us that the oxbow lakes had no catfish or buffalo left. A boat load of Asian carp gave you pennies instead of dollars for cats and buffalo. Since we were a sports/rect fishing forum some others gave him hateful replies. I heard he got some nasty PM's too.
I grew up fishing Sardis spillway mostly since we didn't have a boat. A crew would pick up dead fish along the bank that other fisherman left to dry and die. We had a use for all except gar. It's worse now, no one picks up anymore or anything, gar, buffalo, grass carp, drum and Asian carp stink up the rocks. Almost looks like a dump with what people don't want to bring back up to a trashcans.
