Fished both Little Platte and Camp Branch side. Fish were deep at at Camp Branch. Found fish only in deep water. Fished in 30' of water 20' down and they were schooled and moving quick. Never though Smithville would be a good spider rigging lake, but spider rigging was needed that day. By the time I threw out the marker and trolling motored back over to it, the fish were gone. Caught only a few and got tired of that pretty quick. I wanted to find fish that were schooled and moved over to the Little Platte side. I went past the second set of buoy markers north of the old Trimble Lake and fished in the deepest water I could find which was 30'. Fish weren't stacked, but they were there 20' deep. Caught a few crappie and whites. When I headed back down lake, I kicked the SI on under the W Bridge to see if the fish were there like they were last year. There were a few, but nothing like last year. Before I cleared the bridge and throttled up, I went over the old river channel and found huge schools of fish. I followed the river all the way down to the bend closest to shore on the east side of the lake and kept on marking large schools of fish. Couldn't tell what they were because they were really packed so I stopped and dropped a line to see what I would get. Started catching crappie. After I caught a few I kept following the river all the way down to sailboat cove and found more massive schools of fish. Looks like the fish are taking the same path up lake like they did when they came down the lake in winter. Attached is a map of where I followed the schools.
