Stacked fish on sonar question

I have been fishing brushpiles and stake bed waypoints pretty hard this week and only caught a dozen or so keepers. There has to be lots of keepers out there hiding somewhere or are they there in plain site on my electronics and I am ignoring them because they are not on structure. What I trying to say is that I see lots of groups of fish that are by themselves stacked up high but not around brush, stumps or stake beds. I just figured they are stripes, Asian carp or some other fish beside crappies and pass them by. I think I might try throwing a temporary waypoint on them and drop a minnow or jig in their face. Maybe they are crappie. Anyone do this?

I also see this a lot on the lake I fish lately. It is hard to get on them. They are mostly schooling around in the lake and not staying in one spot like they do when around brush or cover.

This time of year I catch a lot of my crappie away from hard structure suspending in open water chasing shad. That's what a lot of guys are looking for when pulling cranks and such. I just got into power trolling heavy weights so I can keep up with the schools better and cover more water.


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White bass tend to stack vertically in open water. That might be some of what you are seeing.

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Originally Posted by MidMsAngler

This time of year I catch a lot of my crappie away from hard structure suspending in open water chasing shad. That's what a lot of guys are looking for when pulling cranks and such. I just got into power trolling heavy weights so I can keep up with the schools better and cover more water.


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Can you expound on this technique, or to a helpful link?
The open water shad schools, and catching fish around them.

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Originally Posted by Redge

Can you expound on this technique, or to a helpful link?
The open water shad schools, and catching fish around them.

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I saw a vertical stack of fish on my graph while looking for bait this afternoon.
One throw of the cast net got me these white bass....not what I was looking for!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...d629df98a8.jpg

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white crappie tend to stack staggered sort of like laying bricks....they will be like this a lot during the summer months suspended in open water

That's one of the reasons trolling is popular. It started out primarily as a technique to catch the open water species that had a tendency to roam or suspend in the water column or hold on the bottom in open water.Salmon,steelhead,walleye etc and ocean fish especially.

I mean people have trolled for crappie for as long as I can remember. But over the years it has just picked up steam I think as people started figuring out that even the sunfish and panfish species spend a significant amount of the year also doing much the same thing as some of the other species.

It also was not considered sporting by some because it was just too darn effective.Alas banned in bass fishing...but of course Walleye being one of the traditional species taken by that method it remains a traditional method.

Trolling, by what ever method..pushing or pulling crankbaits,longline trolling jigs, is a good way to target these fish whatever the species.

Drift fishing is also very productive...you can straight line it or use a float..vary depth and terminal tackle and bait... and target different fish from crappie to catfish. You just repeatedly drift through the target area.

I also cast to open water fish sometimes...you can catch bluegill sometimes suspended over 40 ft of water five feet deep casting a jig...some people just don't think to try it.

I'm just talkin ...nothing new

I used to call it spider rigging but I guess it was pushing jigs technically. Two 1/16 oz jigs rigged "Capps and Coleman" style with a 1/2oz weight in the middle. 90% of my fishing is done in open water. I mush prefer fishing break lines and ledges versus visible cover or big brushpiles. I just feel that the open water fish are less pressure year round.the lake I fish is an impoundment of the Pearl River and was swamp land prior to the lakes construction, being as such the lake itself contains dozens of old lakes and ponds beneath the surface along with the main river channel. I have found that the shad relate to these areas most of the year but in summertime, especially after a couple of days of high pressure and stable weather they will move off of these ledges and suspend out over the lake beds, river channel, and adjacent deep flats. I often struggled on these days, I could always seem to catch a few but I could never consistently catch numbers. I would go hours with out a bite and then hit a quick double or triple and then back to nothing. In these situations I have upped my weight to 1, 1.5, and 2 oz so I can cover more water and when I find and active school, I can double back fairly effortlessly without tangles. I will run figure eights through an area keeping up with the school dropping a waypoint whenever I run through it.

Here are a few revelations or "theories" I have developed.

- Running the half ounce weight is a great presentation when I was targeting a specific ledge and wanted to work it thoroughly. However it was not efficient in keeping up with active crappie chasing shad. They moved away more quickly than I could follow while maintaining my depth. Upping the weight allowed me to cover more water and stay on top of the fish.

- I don't look for crappie on my graph per say. I look for the shad balls. I set my baits to run in the lower third of the bait balls. Usually in my lake this seems to be about two feet or so above the thermocline once(if) it sets up. Look for irregularly shaped balls of bait. Nice and tight bait balls are not actively being attacked by fish. There may be fish in the area keeping them in tight balls but ones that are irregular in shape or broken up are actively being fed on and will give away hungry schools of fish.

- Though the fish may not be specifically relating to the ledges that I fish normally, they are usually not too far away. Either suspending out in the middle of the lake bed or river channel or on a near by flat if the weather has been stable. Either way, find the bait and find the fish.


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Also, when I see an area that's just loaded with bait on the graph, I mean just bait everywhere and in no real cluster, I generally move on. To me it means that there aren't enough crappie or other predators present to group the bait into tight schools. When I see lots of tight balls of bait I assume fish are in the area but maybe not actively feeding. Sometimes I. Th we situations if you up your speed you can get a reaction bite from these fish even though they are not eating at the moment. These are the same "thought processes" I used when chasing tuna offshore on my charter boat.


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Do you have photos ? It might be easier to come up with what you are seeing . I saw something similar I think the other day myself and the bite was tough

You don't mention what lake you are fishing but your profile shows your home lake as Old Hickory. Never been there but spend alot of time on Lake Barkley which is another Cumberland impoundment and should fish similar.

Trolling may very well work for you or be a better option some days but not all the fish are in open water. Just because your fishing cover doesn't mean it is in the right spots. What your looking for is good cover on really good structure actually, and even then they are still picky about where they hang out. The depth of water on top of creek/river ledges makes a big difference. Stumps versus treetops versus brush versus stakebeds can also make a difference. A patch of stumps on top of a creek ledge in 13ft of water may hold a nice wad of fish but in the next creek the stakebeds on the creek ledge in 14ft won't hold any.

They can also get real picky about what they will eat, contrary to alot of opinions on here. Last time I was out I kept getting short strikes early on one Bobby Garland tail that I had on an orange jighead. Switched it from orange to pink head and never missed another fish that morning and limited out quick.

But anyway, just throwing something different out there since everyone seems to think trolling is the only way to go. Here are several pics of limits from this month from fishing wood on Barkley.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...50264b8c3b.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...62e318fa54.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...5779f7e864.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...5678797477.jpg

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I can tell you here after the spawn it's not long before it's time to spoon fish in like 30' of water. One spot I like will give you a wide variety of fish, Crappie, Gaspergou, Black Bass, Yellow Bass, Hybrid Stripers, and maybe even a catfish, lol! This is a long point sticking out and once it gets to that deep part its time to drop the spoon in and get to bouncing it off the bottom or sometimes even a ways off the bottom. It's also really close to the tree line, but not to it yet.

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I pulled off the back of my boat with success using in line weights (cigar type) last summer. I lost a lot of cranks cause I don't know what I am doing. No depth/size/speed charts jives with my pulling. Ima gonna make my own charts this summer sometime. Weighted lines don't require 100 ft or more line out. I despise winding in 100 ft for a 8 inch crappie. or 5 pound cat fish. Too much trouble.
30 ft with weight should be enough line for me to cover most depths. I will find out. Meantime, 1 or 2 poles for me keeps me happy.

I like pulling the big weights cause the poles don't bend and bobble up and down so much. like in pushing. You know what I mean. I've caught some nice fish pushing rattletraps. Fishing around here is slow, so I ain't in a rush to do nothin'.