Low Water Scouting For Game Fish

Join the Discussion "You ever go out on lakes when they are low and take notes and pictures to find structure that will be under water later?" Ronnie  Past Articles One Year Ago -   2/6/00 - Riprap Fishing Two Years Ago   02/15/99 - Ice Fishing Three Years Ago - 02/09/98 - Trolling for Crappie  Additional Resources • Brush Pictures

Part 2: Why to Scout

Many other lakes around Georgia also are drawn down during the winter, and you can find places to fish at Jackson and Allatoona as well as others. Getting on the water in the late fall and winter is fun as well as informative!

With the water down even five feet, the lake becomes a new place and looks quite different than it does when full. Structure often does not look at all like what you imagined when viewing it on a depthfinder or probing it with a lure. Places you never thought would hold fish suddenly look promising, and it becomes clear why there are places you have tried with no luck.

Why look for hidden structure? It holds fish. Bass and crappie, especially, are structure oriented fish and finding their hidey-holes can lead to some great catches. Again at Clark's Hill, on the old river channel I found a single tree limb sticking just about the surface. It was the same winter the lake was 18 feet low, and the tree stood in 35 feet of water at full pool.

The next winter my mom and I found that underwater tree and landed 66 crappie from it in less than three hours. They were all slabs and 12 of them were over 2 pounds each - on a DeLiar scale, not by estimation! The lake was only 6 feet low, a normal drawdown for Clark's Hill, so we dropped our bait down 12 feet deep and the crappie ate our jigs up!

Another reason for finding structure when the lake is down is being able to see it helps you understand how to fish it. Looking at brush and the way it lays on the structure lets you know where the thickest parts are, the way the limbs run, and exactly how big it is. That tells you where to sit to fish it and how to cast to it.

Seeing hidden structure allows you to locate it again without searching for hours. Lining up a rockpile you can see with shoreline landmarks, then using those landmarks when the lake is full is much easier than riding back and forth, searching with a depthfinder!

Next page > Where to scout and what to look for! > Page 1, 3, 4

Check out Coming Next Week - Next week's column topic, contest prize and new additions to the resources lists.

Previous Features