Thread: 73 Today

Does anyone else ever use this method? So do you mark fish on the locator, drop a buoy and drift the area over and over or what? I mean how do you choose your drift area? I am pretty fascinated with this.

Believe it or not, this impoundment is not all that big. Maybe 200 acres or there abouts. The main basin is is like a fish bowl with little or no structure per say. We know the crappie are there. One end of the lake or the other may produce more than another, depending on wind direction, but it still amazes me with the effectiveness that "speed drifting" affords us. We just go up-wind and drift back, or side to side, again depending on the wind. We don't even to bother with buoys, as we can drift the entire lake in about a 1/2 hour - again, depending on the wind.

Most of the crappie we see on the sonar are 10' - 15' down (as shown above). How they find our baits flying by overhead baffles me sometimes! Most of our success is with straight tails too, which is equally surprising, as the water clarity is only about 3' - 4' max. as I've said. But we don't look a gift horse in the mouth!

I'd probably drop buoys on larger impoundments, but for this one, the crappie are everywhere. And the pressure is relatively heavy too. They close the res to fishing for the fall & winter months, opening only from April to October, so that may be why the population sustains itself quite well. Lots of bait fish too.