How do you decide where to start?

I went to Pickwick on Friday. I haven't crappie fished there in a long time, and the only info i had was that it was a high pressure system with blue skies and warm weather. The graph showed the water temp was 60 degrees so I figured the crappie would be moving up shallow on the flats. I started spider rigging on some flats that were off the main channel in a big creek, maybe 1/3 of the way into the creek. The water in the channel was maybe 20 feet deep, and the flats were big and wide on this side of the creek. I started off with 6 poles, using a combination of minnows and various jig colors.

I trolled around in water that ranged from 10 feet to 2 feet, at a speed of 0.3 to 0.5 MPH I trolled the points of the small feeder creeks, across the mouths of those creeks...no crappie. I caught some bluegill, and a bunch of bass, but no crappie. After 30 or 40 minutes I picked up and moved a little deeper into the creek and targeted a similar area. I did this over and over, working my way further into the creek trying to find them. After about 4 hours of catching everything but crappie I was about 2/3's of the way back into the creek and I finally caught a crappie.

I was in 12 FOW in a spot where a shear ledge transitions to a small flat, then tightens back in to form a ledge again. This is the only place I caught crappie all day. They were all caught in 12 to 14 feet, all were caught at a depth of 6 to 8 feet deep, and all hit either a plain minnow, or a combo that consisted of a red jig with a minnow. I caught three fish in 8 hours. Really the first 4 hours had no crappie, then I hit a little streak from 2:50 to 3:20 where I caught 3 crappie, then no more the rest of the day.

There's not a lot of wood or brush in this particular creek...it's pretty wide open.

I kind of consider the day a bit of a success because I found a few...but it certainly feels like i should have caught more than that spider rigging with 6 poles.

How would you start off on a lake that you hadn't fished in a long time? Where would you start under those conditions, 60 degree water, blue skies, not a lot of visible cover?

With blue bird skies and high pressure I will assume fish will be tight tight to cover. Regardless of the type of structure, I'm looking for them to be in the heart of it. I will start off targeting the structure and holding as close to it as I can. Sometimes drop down to single poling so I can really work it over.

Thanks. I'll definitely try that next time. There are other places I could've gone where I know there's structure. I guess I just really wanted to make the spider rigging work so I stuck with it until something happened. Sometimes I'm too hard headed for my own good.

Haha, I spider rig 90% of the time. Got too much money invested in it not to I feel like! I had similar conditions recently and they were holding tight to the top of the ledge I fished. A few feet in the wrong direction and I couldn't get bit. I think the were siting in the mud right on top because I couldn't even see them on the fish finders. Now, if I m fishing brush and start catching fish every time I'm getting hung up then I may drop to a single pole and work into the brush top.

Go where the fish go.. structure, bait fish, temp and depth for that time of year. Maps especially contour maps help. Most decent fish finders now have lake chart cards.. suited for your area and perfect to pre scout a new lake. I just fish mostly, I'm old school though go by gut. Works about half the time anyways... Lol

You got side imaging? Trust your electronics. If it says there is no fish....there is no fish. Keep moving til you find em. I sometimes will fish on a gut feeling even tho my graph says no fish, and that has yet to be a good decision. Its hard to NOT go with what I know OR with what worked yesterday. If that thing says no fish...it means it!

P.s it sounds like you did everything correct. Sometimes it just doesn't work out and that is what makes it fun.
GOODLUCK!

Probably has a lot to do with the operator, but I catch a lot of fish I never see.

Pickwick feeds me a big piece of humble pie a couple of times throughout the year. It can be terribly hard to fish sometimes. They were also dropping the water Friday. The fish will be on ledges more times than not at pickwick. We fished up there Thursday. Did not catch more than 2 or 3 fish at any one place. They were also super tight to brush on big drop offs. We were single poling. I think the population is down up there too. We caught big fish and a lot of tiny fish. Very few in between fish like an age class of fish is missing.

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Originally Posted by LowePro

You got side imaging? Trust your electronics. If it says there is no fish....there is no fish. Keep moving til you find em. I sometimes will fish on a gut feeling even tho my graph says no fish, and that has yet to be a good decision. Its hard to NOT go with what I know OR with what worked yesterday. If that thing says no fish...it means it!

P.s it sounds like you did everything correct. Sometimes it just doesn't work out and that is what makes it fun.
GOODLUCK!

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I have to start doing this myself. Need to start trusting this expensive equipment or it's not worth having.

If I get blanked for a period of time when I catch my first crappie I mark everything. Depth of bait, depth of water, color of water, direction pulling, speed of pulling, color of jig head, color of jig and most times toss a buoy. Is it possible you found them at 2:50 and then left the fish.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LowePro

You got side imaging? Trust your electronics. If it says there is no fish....there is no fish. Keep moving til you find em. I sometimes will fish on a gut feeling even tho my graph says no fish, and that has yet to be a good decision. Its hard to NOT go with what I know OR with what worked yesterday. If that thing says no fish...it means it!

P.s it sounds like you did everything correct. Sometimes it just doesn't work out and that is what makes it fun.
GOODLUCK!

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SI definitely makes it easy to know where there are no fish. Once you find them though, the tricky part is determining what TYPE of fish you're seeing on the graph. It can be tough with SI to tell if you're looking at white bass, bluegill, bass, or crappie.

I'm better at identifying fish using DI. I can tell the difference between crappie and white bass pretty easily with DI (not all of the time but a lot). SI is trickier because you're seeing it from the side and it can be hard to tell. That's what happened to me on Friday. I'd move around til I marked fish...but then I had to drop lines to find out what they were. It took a while before what I saw on the screen turned into crappie on my hook.

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Originally Posted by catchNgrease

Is it possible you found them at 2:50 and then left the fish.

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It could be. I fished that spot from 2:50 to around 3:45. Then i thought I'd push a little further down the bank toward the back of the creek to see if anything was in that water. When I turned around to come back a couple of bass boats raced up to the spot I was previously.

I switched to the other side of the creek until the bass boats left, then returned to my original spot. I started trolling again, but it was so slow that I talked myself into casting a crank bait while I waited. On my first cast with the crank bait...one of my crappie rods got hit!!! It was a good strike too, I couldn't believe it. I had sat there for 10 minutes with NOTHING...then as soon as I have my hands full and move my attention to something else...BAM. A rod gets hit and I miss a strike.

I put the bass rod down, cursing myself for being stupid, and got back to paying attention. That was the last strike I got. At 5 PM I switched over to bass fishing. I had been watching rod tips for 7 hours at that point and I needed a break.

I'll start with an idea of a general area I think they will be in. Once I get close I'll idle around until I see fish then shut her down. Once fishing I will work my way in and out of different depths until I find the group of fish that are biting and stay on them. Once they play out I move on. Also once I find the fish I switch to map only on my fish finder--until i have to search again.

very good advise by all. Pickwick is not acting normal right now for some reason. I fished all 5 days last week and had some success. we had 34 fish on Good Friday and we cleaned about 100 for the entire week. Nothing under 10" in the boat. Three of us had to work hard to get good fish. This time last year it was wide open. I'm not sure if it they are behind a little or if its going to be a down year.