Lake Maumelle Habitat Enhancement Points

OK guys, hot off the presses. Here are the GPS points from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's GIS department:

Google Earth Maps

The "Lake Maumelle Fish Structures" link will let you look at them in google earth.

The link below this, "GPX file". This is the the one that is a downloadable file that you would place on your handheld GPS or GPS enabled depth finder.

In order for this to work, you must do the following:

1. Right click the "GPX file" link.
2. Save the file somewhere on your computer.
3. Hook GPS to computer using the cables that came with it.
4. Follow instructions to transfer the points to your GPS.

The GPX File can be loaded onto most GPS Units using the software that came with the unit, or third party software Like GPS Utility, or Garmin MapSource Software. We have succesfully tried it out on Garmin units, but it should work with other makes and models as well.

The points such as Buoy 1, 2, 3, etc. have buoys on top of them, and each have 50 structures under them. The other points that just have numeric names will need to be found using your depth finder. These each have 5-20 structures below them.


These links may not be the permanent home for these, so grab them while you can. I will update here if we change the location.

If you have problems with these points and your GPS, send me a message.

Also, I would like to see some pictures, or hear stories on this thread if you fish these structures. I'm very interested in how well these work out. To start, here are a couple of pictures of crappie that I caught on Wednesday afternoon (5-26-2010). One 15", and three 13" crappie. In addition, we released about five smaller crappie, two spotted bass, one largemouth bass, one white bass, one green sunfish, and one bluegill, all caught in about an hour's fishing time on some of these structures. Good luck.

15"

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...5incrappie.jpg

All four keepers

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...nCrappie-1.jpg

Thanks Ben
This project has me excited about Maumelle. I think I will go drag some cranks around in the morning to get to know it a little better.
DP

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bigben7

OK guys, hot off the presses. Here are the GPS points from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's GIS department:

Google Earth Maps

The "Lake Maumelle Fish Structures" link will let you look at them in google earth.

The link below this, "GPX file". This is the the one that is a downloadable file that you would place on your handheld GPS or GPS enabled depth finder.

In order for this to work, you must do the following:

1. Right click the "GPX file" link.
2. Save the file somewhere on your computer.
3. Hook GPS to computer using the cables that came with it.
4. Follow instructions to transfer the points to your GPS.

The GPX File can be loaded onto most GPS Units using the software that came with the unit, or third party software Like GPS Utility, or Garmin MapSource Software. We have succesfully tried it out on Garmin units, but it should work with other makes and models as well.

The points such as Buoy 1, 2, 3, etc. have buoys on top of them, and each have 50 structures under them. The other points that just have numeric names will need to be found using your depth finder. These each have 5-20 structures below them.


These links may not be the permanent home for these, so grab them while you can. I will update here if we change the location.

If you have problems with these points and your GPS, send me a message.

Also, I would like to see some pictures, or hear stories on this thread if you fish these structures. I'm very interested in how well these work out. To start, here are a couple of pictures of crappie that I caught on Wednesday afternoon (5-26-2010). One 15", and three 13" crappie. In addition, we released about five smaller crappie, two spotted bass, one largemouth bass, one white bass, one green sunfish, and one bluegill, all caught in about an hour's fishing time on some of these structures. Good luck.

15"

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...5incrappie.jpg

All four keepers

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...nCrappie-1.jpg

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I thought ya'll called Maumelle the Dead Sea?:confused: Ya'll been holding out on us.:D

Paron is a small community west of Little Rock. The only folks I know that fish Maumelle regularly and do well is a small group of friends from that community that have grown up fishing on Lake Maumelle.

I've not been on it, as I believe they have minimum size restrictions (imagines a sign that says, "You must be this tall to ride this ride). I think you have to be in a craft 16' or greater to legally be on the lake, but I may be mistaken.

Nice work Ben and thanks for posting.

Thanks a lot for posting this BigBen7. I down loaded and saved the gps points. I've never fished there but have wanted to and this should be a big help. Does any one know if the 16' boat minimum is true? My seaark is only 15' so it would be nice to know if it's allowed there.....nice catch by the way!

I was able to look it up on the agfc site.....the minimum boat length there is 14'.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CastandBlast

I was able to look it up on the agfc site.....the minimum boat length there is 14'.

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If there is a wind advisory, dont be on that lake in a small boat. It can get major league ugly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by soswine

If there is a wind advisory, dont be on that lake in a small boat. It can get major league ugly.

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The ride in is always a pain in the South end riding my stick steer..
DP

Thanks for the compliments guys. This is an awesome project, that was very rewarding to be a part of. Also, I'm an angler that lives in Little Rock as well, so I will benefit from them too. Please be a little patient as we get these GPS points squared away. I've received about 5 or 6 e-mails and calls today about them, with half of people saying they work with no problems, and half of them saying they couldn't get them to work. We will get them figured out.

Thanks for your help Ben. Look forward to getting the waypoints. I was one of those who couldn't get them to work.

Thanks again for doing all this. Hope to see ya next week.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DRPEPPER

Thanks Ben
This project has me excited about Maumelle. I think I will go drag some cranks around in the morning to get to know it a little better.
DP

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I didn't get on the water until about 9AM Saturday. I started on the upper end and was shocked that it rarely got over 15 feet unless you were in the channel; which is really crooked. Caught one little bass.
I moved to the lower end and found more consistant water. But, no crappies wanted my one eyed crank.
I tried spider rigging over some of the new attractors. I was getting bream hits on most of them I tried. I even rolled up to go get some crickets. But, by the time I got back to the ramp, the more Burger King was calling out to me.
I think all the fisherman that saw the bouy across from the ramp near the island thought it was a channel marker. You can get you hat knocked off if you are not careful.
DP

Hey DP. The lower end of the lake is much deeper, with the bulk of it being around 28-32 ft deep. This is a lake that it would really behoove you get a detailed map with contours and learn how the lake is laid out. To be honest, this lake is a tough one for normal folks (definitely myself included, as I'm no "master angler") to just come onto, not knowing much about it, and catch a lot of fish. This is one of the reasons that we decided to enhance habitat. That way, people who just came out to the lake for the day could have a better chance of having a successful trip. The crappie that I caught were in 18-22 ft of water. Is your crank making it down at least 15 feet?

Thanks for the report. Let us know if you go back again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bigben7

Hey DP. Is your crank making it down at least 15 feet?

Thanks for the report. Let us know if you go back again.

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Yea. That is where they start bumping bottom.
I was surprised that I could actually see the cover on my graphs. I never have seen what I was looking at before. I thought you placed PVC pipe. But, it looked more like some kind of mats. I spider rigged jigs around it though and never did get hung up. I marked some fish too. I bet those big bream i hear about on this lake are going to love them.
I will be back. Too close to the house not to.
Thanks again
DP

Ben, My name is Joe Womble. I live in sherwood and fish Maumelle some. Iahve been trying to down load the waypoints from gps and am haveing trouble. Can you help me git th imfo on mu gps unit. thanks sJoe

Big Ben, I Have loded the Cord.and # of the brush piles to mym gps. They are all listed by #. Do you know of a map that shows the # of the brush pile Nolan

Joe/guys,

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been on vacation for two weeks, and am trying to get caught back up. Let me clarify the status of the maps/GPS points/etc. Soon after the intial effort, we published some points for a short time. Now we are putting together a brochure that contains a large map with all of the buoys clearly marked as well as all of the ones that are not marked on the surface. The folks in our communications department decided that we need to renumber the buoys and points from east to west. Besides this, we have also just changed our website (check it out: www.agfc.com). This is the reason that these points have not become avaliable sooner. This also means that if you already downloaded the points, the numbers on them will not coordinate with the brochure which I anticipate will be ready and available both here at AGFC headquarters and at Jolly Roger's. So, if you already got the points from me, then you will need to see me again to get the new version (Paronite, this means you!). The file that the GIS division is working on is going to contain all of the fish structures placed by AGFC and the Army Corps of Engineers in several different lakes including Lake Maumelle, Bull Shoals, Norfork, Chicot and Greeson. I believe there are currently over 1300 points.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but we just want to get it correct from the start so we don't have to make a bunch of readjustments. For now, you can look at the points on Google Earth by downloading the file from the following link (AGFC | Google Earth Maps)

Click on "Lake Maumelle Fish Structures".

If you have google earth pro, then you can send them to your GPS unit.

Besides that, these structures should be getting better as they age. I recently spoke with a gentlemen that fishes the lake regularly, and he fished one submerged structure and one buoy, and caught several crappie, including one "giant", multiple bream, a few chunky spotted bass, and two saugeye. He said the spotted bass had some red film on their sides which I believe are a type of algae that they got from holding right against the structures (this is a good thing, and means the structures are ripening).

I will let you know when these new files and brochures become available. Thanks for your patience.

Also, if anybody goes out there, please let us know on this forum what you catch, and you know everyone loves pictures. Good luck!

Here is the document that I previously mentioned:

AGFC | Lake Information and Maps

It is a link on the left side of the page called "Fishing Hotspots on Lake Maumelle".

This document is also available in print form at Jolly Roger's marina on the lake and at Arkansas Game and Fish Commission headquarters and Central Arkansas Water headquarters.

With this electronic document, you could easily look at the map and decide on a couple of places on the lake you would like to try, then manually load them on your GPS and go find them using your depth finder.

We are making progress on the GPX file for downloading all of the points to your GPS, and as always, I will let you know when that is available. It will likely be on the same page as the link above.

Enjoy!

That's a NICE map! I thought I'd found one just SE of Jim's Island the other day but I guess it wasn't. The one on the north side of Big Island is loaded with bass, I've got into them twice there so far.

Hey gang. I made it out to the lake this afternoon in some of the hottest weather I have ever had the pleasure of fishing in, and had a VERY GOOD trip. We fished from 5:00 PM until 7:00 PM, and were able to catch 33 crappie and 6 spotted bass (Kentucky). All of the crappie were between 8-11inches, so no giants, but many were good fish with "thick shoulders". Here are the seven that came home with me for dinner:

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...e7-15-2010.jpg

We fished two spots that did not have PVC structures (submerged roadbeds), and three spots that were ours with structures. Two were buoys, and one was a submerged spot. We caught more smaller fish on the roadbed, and fewer but better fish on the PVC structures. Long story short, I was just really glad that they were so cooperative! Without giving away every detail, we were very slowly and patiently fishing 1/16 oz jigs and grubs.

One other encouraging thing that I saw was schools of young of the year spotted bass at three different sites, including one buoy, and one of our areas with submerged PVC, and no buoy. So far, I'm really happy with the ability of these structures to draw in fish.

Everytime I'm fishing out there, as a biologist, I'm thinking, "I wonder if I could catch saugeye here with leeches? What about bass on shaky head worms? Man, I bet I could really wear the bream out with some crickets!". Needless to say, I'm excited to continue fishing these things for years to come.

Get out there and fish them, and let me know how you did! That's all for now folks...

All right folks. I'm just going to keep catching all the crappie in the lake by myself!

I have been lucky enough go out on several occasions with a gentleman who has spent a good number of years chasing crappie, especially on Lake Maumelle. On Saturday, I decided to go out, without "professional supervision". My father was visiting from Springfield, IL, so we rented a boat and went after them. We fished from 6:30 AM - 11:00 AM, and even though we didn't catch 30+ in two hours like last round, they were still pretty cooperative. We caught 25 crappie, with a couple about 9-9.5", about 20 were 9.5-10.5", and one 13.5". Every single one was a black crappie!

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...135Crappie.jpg

We also caught a few really nice bluegill around 8". Here are the ones that came home with us, 8 black crappie and one bluegill:

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p.../Crappie-2.jpg

Like I said, I'm happy to keep catching them all myself, but I'd love to see some other folks get out there and get in on the action, and show us some pictures of how they did.

One more thing, when we were on one pile, we caught our anchor on a structure, and we pulled it up along with the anchor. Before sending it back down, I did note that it had a really nice film of algae growing on it which is great. Remember, these things should continue to improve over time as they mature.

Way to go Ben. I'm planning on trying it this week. Maybe I can post some good news too. Thanks for sharing.

Went last week with another two crappie.com's. We took the kids and trolled around for a bit. Got one of the maps. left it in the truck. We pulled Bandits 300 around and put 10 in the boat to clean. Let the boys take turn pulling fish in. They had a big time. Gonna try to make it again this week too. With a map in the boat this time.

Did get a few off of one spot that was marked. And missed a few.

Ready to go again!

Thanks for the update Slipcork! The map definitely helps find the ones that are submerged. Glad you had some success anyways, and we are all about getting the kids off the couch and into the boat. Keep at em.

Hey Ben
I had some success last week too. I drug my bandits East/South (???) of Jolly Rogers. I tried to find some of the unmarked spots on the map. But, my Garmin 76 isn't giving me anything near what is posted. I haven't been following the other post. Is this a common problem?
Also
I read where boo or any organic materials are not allowed. Are we allowed to sink our own PVC or plastic condo's? Or is this restricted to just an organized activity? There are more spots screaming for something in them. I don't mean to knock the work already done. But, the lake is still in desparate need of spawning habitat.
DP

DP, thanks for the update. Where are you getting your GPS points from? My best suggestion would be that if you have a copy of the print map from Jolly Roger's, then you should pick particular points that you would like to visit, and manually enter them in your GPS. You may also have to change your coordinate system, as these are not in DD MM SS.SSSS, like a lot of GPS are in. We are having a challenging time making a set of points that is available and works with everyone. Different GPS use different proprietary file types, and different people/GPS units use different coordinate systems. Long story short, if the points are coming out in Argentina instead of Arkansas, it's probably a coordinate system issue.

As for habitat placement, at this time, the only placement that is taking place is of PVC, that is done with the permission of CAW, and under the guidance of AGFC. We are going to begin planning a simlar effort to what was done this year for next spring. I will be using this board to solicit help and location input. Please help us out when that time comes.

Thanks again, and let us know how you do out there in the future. Also, I just heard word of mouth from an angler that was using an underwater camera that besides crappie and bream, he saw quite a few saugeye hanging out around some of these structures. I don't have exact locations or anything, but I'm looking into buying one for us to take a look.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bigben7

DP, thanks for the update. Where are you getting your GPS points from? My best suggestion would be that if you have a copy of the print map from Jolly Roger's, then you should pick particular points that you would like to visit, and manually enter them in your GPS.

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I am trying to find them with that map. Haven't been successful yet. I am going to try and convert the co-ordinates with easy GPS this week and see what happens.
But....
Two trips in a row and I have caught fish trying to find the non bouyed attractors. This is really getting good since the lake is so handy to the house. Caught a good walleye, white bass, and reel good catfish last Friday. Not impressive numbers. But the three fish made a meal for me and the Mrs.
And this time, I didn't catch me!!
DP

Easy GPS works for me. I've found the structure but I haven't found the fish. :eek: Yet....:rolleyes: So you are doing better than I am without the structure. :o

Back at it again. This time I brought my boss, Clifton Jackson, along for the ride. We are shooting an episode of "Talkin' Outdoors" with Wildman in the near future, so we decided to do some scouting to make sure that we will be able to catch some fish when the cameras are on.

My go to honey hole was a non-producer for us today which was quite a disappointment. So, we decided to try one of the buoys that I hadn't tried yet. We didn't catch a ton, but in the end, we came away with 2 whites and 4 black crappie all between 9-13". Of course Clifton hooked one "sure enough" big white crappie 16+", but he threw the hook right next to the boat.

We were fishing with 1/16th oz jigs with minnows. We also caught countless spotted bass, and even kept a few. I ate one tonight and it was really tasty. Not crappie good, but good enough... This is some of the cleanest water in the country.

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip:

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...k/46d038e6.jpg

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...k/61a698bd.jpg

Just an update on these points. I have the points available for download at the following website:

AGFC | Lake Information and Maps
Down on the left side is a file called "Downloadable .gpx file of AGFC fishing structures (right-click to save) (14.1kb)"

You will need to right click on this link, and choose "Save Target As...", then in the "File Name" box, you need to delete "xml", and replace with "gpx". Then, just choose whatever location you want to save the file.

This format is what I know Garmin hand held units and Hummingbird depth finders use. Lowrance uses another format, but I'm still figuring out the conversion process (Google is your friend).

This file has the buoys, named as MB1-MB10, and the submerged strcutures (not marked with buoys; you have to find them) as MFS 11-50 (MFS = Maumelle Fish Structures).

Also, I just wanted to mention that I went out with my wife for about an hour and 20 minutes on Easter Sunday afternoon and caught 11 crappie. I only kept fish over 10", and that was 7 out of 11. The smaller four were right around 9", and the biggest fish was about 12". No giants, but great eating fish caught quickly. I will say that I was in one of the MFS points in the mid-40's, and was in between 16-20 fow.