Deep Water Lake Shellcracker Questions

Firstly, I'm really pumped to see this forum up. Secondly I grew up catching bream on Bankhead where it's so easy it's almost unfair when finding huge beds and catching 70 or 80 keepers in a couple hours. While I love doing that from time to time I'm wanting to catch some the huge 'gills and Shellcrackers that are in Smith Lake. I cannot find a bream bed there. I've done a lot of searching for them and it seems like they bed so deep that you can't see them there. I've even seen some lockjawed shellcrackers that were probably well over 2 pounds cruising around my family's dock there. Question is this; where would I target shellcrackers in such deep water? Points around 20' deep on bottom? Any advice would greatly appreciated.

I would love to find them there also. Smith is my favorite lake and i almost get depressed in the summertime because of how hard it gets to fish it. My only suggestion would be to rotate baits. I have found crackers close to bream beds and they would only bite a worm. wouldn't touch a cricket. I finally pulled a pretty good haul out of a private lake last weekend and had several over 10". i tried everything from 6" off the bank to slow reeling off the bottom. That day it all seemed to revolve around the time of day. i started around 1:30 and caught my majority of the fish from 5- dark.
Let me know if you come up with anything.

mud

Mud, I think I'm going to be up there for a good portion of next week. I know it's a the worst week of the year to try to fish up there, but I'm thinking if I can catch them then, I can catch 'em any time. I'd love love to share some info if I can find something worth sharing. I've read a couple of your other post and see that you already know of all those crappie in the lights in the early AM. Good luck with it. I'll post something on the subject early next week.

i have never fished for bream or crackers deep but in my experience shell crackers usually dont bite crickets anywhere near as good as they do worms.

good luck! get ya some bobberstoppers. when all else fails, i've never not at least been able to catch a bass on a 10" grape worm. people been fishing that bait on that lake for years. its my go to when nothing else works. i've also had good luck at night with the flatheads. if you can get you up a half a dozen or so really small bream and fish them on bottom around a rock bluff.