What's the Deal With Keystone Lake

[Crappie Hog]

I've been winter fishing keystone for the last couple of years and keep catching dinks. I can find huge schools of fish and shad on the locator but can only catch 5 inch crappie. Any recommendations?

About to give up on this lake.

[Woodworker42]

What state are you in? Which Lake Keystone are you talking about? There are several around the country and you profile doesn't show your location.

[Crappie Hog]

Oklahoma

[crapAlicous]

Crappie Hog, I don't fish Keystone regularly, but fished it last weekend. We caught five fish and there was a man at the ramp who said that that was first time he had talked to anyone who had caught any at all in several weeks. All the dead and dying threadfin shad is the reason it's bad in my opinion, but I really don't know.

[crapAlicous]

Woops, above thread should read "in my opinion."

[swollencrappie]

CrapAlicous..... i noticed a ton of shad that were struggling. Forgot to ask about that at the weigh in, so you seen them too huh? what do you think is the cause? I never seen schools, but i seen tons of single ones that were as near to death as you can come without dying.

[crapAlicous]

Hey Swollencrappie. It looked like to me that they were threadfins. I believe northern Oklahoma is about as far north as they can survive. They can't take the cold. About every three or four years it gets cold enough to kill em. A few years ago we were loading the boat with blue cats at Grand. A cold snap hit and the shad started dying. After that, you could fish all day and not get a bite.

[Woodworker42]

With the -2 degrees a few days ago, do you reckon we had an even more widespread shad kill? And, it seemed to me, the fishing was off for the whole summer, and I don't think I saw as many shad as I have in previous years. But I don't base the fish population on what I can catch. The water levels have been up and down like a yoyo-I don't think that helps. And I don't think the spawn this spring was very good. CrappieAlious, thanks for your input. Hope you and UncleJosh get em figured out by spring!

[Crappie Hog]

I was fishing off the oil derrick near Mannford and saw a shad ball, which had to be over 20 foot in diameter and at least 20 deep. I stayed on top of it and caught dinks that was almost transparent. LOL if I were to find a shad ball like that at Oolagah I can almost guarantee catching some big fat crappie. I was just wondering if there were others experiencing the same thing.

[Woodworker42]

Dinks is all I have ever caught at the oil derrick, but then I haven't fished it all that much. I'm usually north of 412 bridge.