Old Hickory Info and short report

Hi CCers,

I am very blessed to have my grandfather camping at Old Hickory Lake (cedar creek) for two weeks. He is wanting to fish a couple hours several mornings and I am hoping to join him for a few mornings. I left him my boat tonight after we fished for a few hours without much luck. My boat is small and slow so we will need to fish close to the cedar creek area. I would really appreciate any pattern or pointers to help me get him on some fish. There are plenty of creek channels in this area and flats and shallow water and docks too. Any info would be appreciated! Below is a short summary of what I tried this evening...

Report: Slow trolled edges of cedar creek channel in 18-24 FOW, slow trolled flats near creek channel in 12-18 FOW caught only catfish and bass. Moved near marina up in the creek arms off main lake and caught a couple small crappie near big boat slips. We fished mainly with double jig rigs and tried several colors.

Keep plugin. Try some crankbaits at 1.4 to 1.5 mph

Thanks Tenncrappie! Don't have a setup for that unfortunately. I think tomorrow morning, I am going to focus on boat docs and marina slips in 10 + FOW and try single pole jigging and pitching up into dark spots w my spin tackle.

Bump:

5:30-8 AM this morning on Old Hickory (Cedar Creek area): trolled creek edges, trolled flats in 12-18 fow, jigged docs everywhere from 6.5-25 fow. Double jig rigs variety of colors, 4 poles out most of the time, caught 0 crappie! Kept two nice eating size catfish and caught several small bass. Beautiful morning on the lake and was great to be out there with my 84 year old grandpa. But, I need some serious help finding the crappie!

I feel confident I've tried about all of the areas crappie "should" be this time of year. I'm seeing good structure on my ff. I have to be doing something wrong with presentation. My boat is not really set up for spider rigging/trolling and that may be most of my problem?

-My tm is too fast and I don't have rod holders and because of my speed I'm not confident of my bait depths.
-The rod tips are probably too close to the tm and boat due to lack of rod holders.
-I have tried to compensate for speed by adding a 3/4 egg sinker between the two 1/16 oz jig heads but I think it is robbing a lot of jig action.
-I also try going off and on w tm, but my boat is so small and light any movement or on/off action causes lots of rocking and swaying. Wake from another boat gets my boat rocking for 2-3 min and rod tips are up and down up and down. I've noticed a lot of spider riggers are in much heavier boats that tend to keep rod tips more steady in these scenarios.

All in all, I don't know what the heck I'm doing and these are my best guesses as to the reason I'm not getting any crappie. Even with all of this, I've drug enough jigs through enough water, I should have picked up a couple the past 2 trips out I would think. Any advice would be much appreciated. Or better yet, if someone wants to mentor me in trolling for summer time crappie in Mid-TN, I will happily buy gas and food and bait!

Sent PM

Ray

I don't fish Old Hickory much, but I do fish Percy Priest quite a bit during this time of year. I usually catch crappie trolling crank baits anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 mph using an iPilot trolling motor in 12 to 25 fow. This time of year the crappie are usually about 10 to 12 feet down, but I have caught them as shallow as 6 feet down with the crank baits. I sometimes long line a double rig with jigs from one of my rods. Adding an extra split shot gets the jigs a little deeper. I also use planar boards on a couple of rods to get the lures away from the boat. I keep a variety of crank baits on hand for trolling for crappie and use Rapala JSR5's, Bandits, Berkley Flicker Shads, Norman Middle N's, and Hot n Tots. Academy Sports H20 Express CRULD model works well too. The best colors on the cranks for me are Mad Cow, chartruese, pink, anything with an orange belly, and red. I troll with 6 rods. Trolling in an "S" pattern helps vary your depth as well, we get a lot of strikes on turns. Hope this helps and good luck!