Beaver Dam State Park....worth it?

i keep hearing about monster crappie at beaver dam...i went up last week...granted between s torms and it was windy...but i didn't catch not 1 all along the banks...i scoured the banks...nothing....if it's good fishing...where?

take it nobody's been there....or....

I hace caught a few nice bass from there but I have never caught a crappie.

I have lived in carlinville my whole life and nobody I mean nobody local fishes there . And theres a reason for that!! I have never caught anything of any species that i would write home about!! The dozen or so times i have taken a walk around the lake and stopped to talk to people fishing or just watched people, they ( people fishing) would have buckets of VERY SMALL ,bluegill,crappie,baass, and sometimes cat fish! You gotta let them grow if you want quality fishing,and you should follow the creel and size limits!This is just my 2 cents but i and several people i know just go there for family cookouts and beer drinkin!!!!!!!!!!!!

I claim no expertise on catching crappie out of Beaver Dam - but a couple years ago when I was up there in my little two man bass buggy - my son and I were throwing big minnow baits for bass out in the middle where the emergent weeds were coming up and I ran across a guy fishing with his son. They were a bit 'unusual' by comparison to most crappie tactics. They anchored off near one of the mid-lake weed lines and just scattered minnows all along that weed line. He said they don't usually catch many - but they're usually really nice ones.

I can't recall if that was mostly milfoil or hydrilla - or both. But I know the fish relate to those mid-lake weeds. And I think they are probably the preferred areas v. using the shoreline brush exclusively.

For my own part - my son caught a real nice 12" fat crappie on a Rapala Husky Jerk #14. So - apparently - I"ve been doing it wrong all these years - I need to fish with big stick baits for the nice crappie. ;)

We also boated a lot of nice bass and even caught a very late (almost black) trout that was left over from the fall trout stocking. It was a fat 16"er

It's hard to fish that way if there's a lota wind - it chops up the water to the point where it's harder to see the weed lines.

Hope this helps ya out..


Hope this helps ya out...

Great park, horrible fishing

I fished it 2 days last week caught my limit in 90 min both days....I stay about 50 yrds from the bank and troll jigs

awesome...i am so appreciative of the info...i've been fishing beaver dam for about 15 years....mainly catfish, trout, and bass....never even considered crappie....now...i must stick up for beaver dam and say that the catfishing in the summer and the trout fishing in the fall/spring....top notch....maybe 10 times out of 250 trips there have i ever NOT caught anything...as far as catfishing is concerned....i've caught a few trophy's...bas...whew!! big ol bass here and there...but i am a newbie when it comes to crappie...went to yaeger with a buddy n caught 125....only kept 50 though...all over 9" biggest was 13 1/2"...so i thought i'd try one of my favorite parks for crappie...haven't been successful the 2 times i went for crappie so far...but...hey...it ain't called catchin'....it's called fishin'!!!