Breaking Down a New Lake

[servin28]

Hello Everyone,

My dad and I are heading to a "new" lake this weekend in search of some crappies. We have fished for walleye a couple times at this lake in the spring/summer/fall and have done OK, however we are hoping to take a crack at some crappies through the ice. Apparently the lake has a good population of them and we inadvertently hooked into some over the summer while trolling for walleye.

The last couple of days I have been reading articles on crappie fishing and from what I am reading, it seems that we should be heading to deeper holes outside the weed lines, with a muddy or soft bottom...apparently. I have also been searching contour maps of the area and found a couple good holes and I think we are going to start there.

The tentative game plan is to head out early Saturday morning and use the Navionics mobile app to locate this hole and then drill a series of holes, starting from the deepest spot (+/-33ft) and head towards a nearby shoal (15ft)-see the screenshot below. I have a vex, so I will be checking while dad drills holes. . hopefully we will mark something before the ice looks like swiss cheese.

Lake Map-1.JPG (127.73 KiB) Viewed 1610 times

Does anyone have any other tips or advice that may help us out or is our game plan way out to lunch?

Cheers,

[almontefisher]

Your gameplan sounds solid for any type of fish you are looking for. All that changes is the area's you look in. Anyway based on the map and your thoughts I would say you are on the right track. If you really want some sound advice I would PM RJ and see if he has a second to offer any tips for you. He is a very busy man now but who knows he does like helping people out when he can!

[smitty55]

Another thing to consider is the time of day you'll be fishing. During the day the fish will be over deep basins but towards the end of the day they will move in to shallower water. I know not every lake may be like this, but it is the case in lakes like Clayton, Mississippi and the Lower Rideau. Good luck with it.

Cheers

[tbone1088]

If you can find green weeds I would start there and move toward the basin.There are so many factors in fishing though you need to consider: What type of lake it is(meso,olli,etc.) What predators are in the lake and how many, the forage base and what the crappies are eating. If they are in the soft bottom most likely keying in on invertabrates, bugs things like that so match your presentation accordingly. Also crappie are notorious suspending fish, so work the whole column with the vex. DON'T STOP MOVING TILL YOU FIND FISH!