Morgan Lake at Wilson Morgan Park in Decatur

My wife actually said to me “Why don’t you go fishing” after lunch today, so I went lol.

Purely out of curiosity I went this and fished for a couple hours here after a previous unsuccessful stop. Caught several small crappie in the 5-8” range I would guess. Several more bites I missed. Fished a Bobby Garland under a bobber set at 2 ft deep, around the spillway area on the backside of the lake. I was truly surprised that there were crappie in there and that many of them. I don’t know if there are fish of any size though. I’m also not sure if it’s safe to eat anything out of that body of water, looks like it’s fed by ditch runoff and garbage all over the place. Anyone else ever fished there or know more about the lake itself?


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I've thought of giving it a try, but not yet. You might want to give Madison County Lake a try off the Dam. I've caught several in the last few trips within casting distance of the dam. There's water 12 to 15 feet deep within casting distance, FYI.

Used to be larger Crappie and bass in their. Don’t know what happened to them.

Never fished there. But I read the thread title and made me think. Wow I’ve never fished there haha. I’m sure they would be safe to eat. It’s just a storm drain that feeds rain water off the streets. Prob some garbage but where ain’t? I bet there is some bigguns in that piece of water.

I’ll definitely be going back to fish it more thoroughly. There were a few tree tops and submerged logs you could see within casting distance of the shoreline. I’d bet they’d be holding fish.

Ditch - thanks for the info on MCL, I’ve seen your posts and some others about it but never been there myself. Sounds like a good place to try out sometime!


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I went back this afternoon again just to see if I could replicate yesterday’s results and catch any better fish. I was successful in catching fish again, but I only caught one 10 inch fish. The rest were all small like yesterday. Fished from about 7-8:15, caught probably 20-30 fish I would guess.

It got me to thinking about crappie size in small impoundments like this one. I’ve read that if they are under fished it can cause the size of the crappie population to be stunted due to overcrowding and lack of food, and that you should keep all these small ones to improve the overall size of the fish. There is no size limit due to being less than 500 surface acres. What do y’all think or anyone have experience on this subject to speak of?


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Most smaller lakes have smaller crappie. Keeping some will help but you'll have to keep a lot and it will take a while to see any changes

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Gotcha. I'm going to keep hunting for bigger fish when I'm able to go back, but if I consistently only catch the small ones I may start keeping a limit if I can and just fry them whole. It sounds as though it won't hurt anything to keep smaller ones if that's all you're catching in this scenario.

One thing I did notice yesterday is several schools of minnows or fry of some type around the shoreline. I'm not sure the size is due to a lack of food necessarily.

I'll try to find time to toss my kayak in it Sat or Sun. I'll let you know what I find.

I don’t know what depth your fishing but “SOMETIMES” if I’m catching smalls I go a little deeper and catch bigger fish.....sometimes

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Originally Posted by Treeshaka

I don’t know what depth your fishing but “SOMETIMES” if I’m catching smalls I go a little deeper and catch bigger fish.....sometimes

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I'm planning on doing some more "searching" the next time I go over there so I'll be looking for some deeper water if there is some. I'm not sure how deep the water gets there. I would guess that in the spots I've been so far it's maybe 4-5 feet at most but I could be wrong. There is a lot of underwater vegetation so it's hard for me to know how deep it truly is based on how much grass and weeds are underwater. I know that when I fished my jig at 3-4 feet depth I pulled up weeds.

If there are fish there, Ditch will catch them.
I look forward to the trip report Ditch......"caught 150 14" ers and threw them back. I like eating the small ones." LOL

you the man DB