Watts Bar/ Whites Creek 12-9

[MJohnson]

Got to Lakeside right at daylight, found a bait shop but it wasn't open yet so I tried spider rigging for a while. Water temp was 50-51 degrees all day. Got several bites but no hookups so I went and got some minnows and went back.

I caught a couple spotted bass, a smallmouth, and a bream doing that, so I started trying a minnow about 6' deep under a float around trees and docks. Finally got two nice crappie under a dock that reaches out into 20 FOW. Tried several other docks with nothing but bream. I must have caught two dozen bream today but only the two crappie. I hunted with my Lowrance and found several brushpiles in 15-20 FOW, but didn't catch a single fish on any of them.

There are TONS of baitfish in Whites Creek, there were so many my depthfinder was losing bottom sometimes. I never saw any fish under them on the depth finder.

I did see a school of fish hanging right on the drop off on the edge of the creek channel, but it was 35 or 36 feet deep, so I didn't try to catch them. I figured they were catfish. Could they have been crappie that deep? I wish I had dropped some minnows down to them.

[CrappiePappy]

MJ ... it is certainly possible that the fish on the drop could have been Crappie. But, certainly just as possible to have been any number of other species.

A few years back, a good friend of mine fished WB in Dec. and found small fish under/around docks & bigger fish on deep brush (20-30ft deep). My most recent trip was in late Oct, and I found no fish under deep docks and had to go to laydowns that topped out at 25-30ft deep to catch fish. ( http://www.crappie.com/crappie/kentu...bar-lake-trip/ )

I'm not sure why, but it's my belief that the dynamics of the when/where Crappie are found has changed from what it used to be. I'm basing that on my experiences over the last 15yrs of fishing at WB. From around 2000-2005 (April/Oct) most trips were successful by shooting docks or casting to brushpiles/laydowns. Since then, it has been very hit/miss under conditions that are relatively the same for those time periods. Other than the cyclic nature of Crappie populations, due to weather/water conditions & levels, the only major factor that I believe could have had an impact ... has been the changing of the timing of the rise/fall of the pool levels by the COE. ( Watts Bar Lake users want answers from TVA officials - Local News - Mobile )

... cp

[skeetbum]

I've been fishing 32' deep in 45 fow. If you see em, fish em.

[Two Dog]

Wow, not encouraging about Watts Bar ...

[CrappiePappy]

Wow, not encouraging about Watts Bar ...

Oh, they're there ... we just don't seem to have many members that fish it consistently, and keep the reports updated. It's cyclic, just like most other lakes. And if you get a year or two with low quality spawns, then the numbers are down two or three years later.

81,000 3" Blacknose were stocked in Oct 2014
145,000 2" Blacknose were stocked in Oct 2014

The survivors will be keeper fish by 2017. According to the Facebook page of TWRA ... there were no Crappie stocked in Watts Bar in 2013.

And while that many Crappie being stocked may sound like a lot of fish, it's really less than 5 fish per acre of water (if evenly distributed). What I'd like to know is what area (ramp) does TWRA use to put these stocked fish in the lake ??

... cp