Fishing Sardis spillway.

[Shaggyfrog]

Hi. New to the forums. I'm looking for some tips on catching crappie in the Sardis spillway. I grew up fishing Enid Lake with my dad and he could wear out the crappie from the boat. We didn't do a lot of spillway fishing so I'm sort of lost when it comes to that. Now that I've moved within a few miles of the Sardis spillway, I'm looking for some tips so that I can prove to my two girls that I can, in fact, catch some crappie down there! When is the best time to fish? When water is being released, off, or somewhere in the middle? What about outside temps and weather? How does it affect the bite there? What are some solid jigs/lures/or baits to use in the spillway? It just seems every time I've been over there, I get skunked so I'm just trying to figure out what I could do differently. Any tips would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[canebreaker]

Look at the south wall of the tunnel to see a scale, usually at 7 ft when the outlet is shut off or little water released. That's the rock level to the No Boat sign where the channel widens out. Fish at 6 1/2 to 7 ft in that area and spool in when your float get about 10 ft from shore to keep from hanging up. Wear polarized glasses and look for dark spots, bait fish and fish those areas. Below the No Boat sign is a deep hole about center of the channel, fish deeper there. Check the MVK report posted in the sticky section above in the ramp section, zero release for now. Little water coming out due to a bad gate in the tower. Hard to tell what color jig they want, can change while fishing.

[Shaggyfrog]

Thank you for this info. Sounds like I've been fishing way too shallow, probably more like 3 ft. I'll try these tips for sure. Appreciate you introducing me to the MVK report. So does fishing seem to pick up when water is being released?

[canebreaker]

Crappie are moving into shallow water now so 3 ft about 4 to 10 ft from shore is good.
Water flow gets bait fish to moving more.
If it wasn't so cold I'd be fishing the wingwall now. Maybe it will warm up soon.