Kentucky Lake Crappie Fishing
Kentucky Lake has some outstanding crappie Fishing. Hit it right on this lake and you can fill the livewell in a hurry.
Spring - The annual crappie spawn usually takes place during the last week of March or the first couple of weeks in April. It all depends on the weather.
The pre-spawn is the time to catch crappie staging at the mouths of bays and creeks. At times, they will school up in very big schools from 10 to 17 feet of water. As the spawn arrives, crappie can still be spread out at various depths. A cold front will move fish back out into deeper water during this time of year, so it really takes a good week or so of warmer weather to get these fish going. Once they start their spawn, the black crappie will move into the shallows first and you can be catching black crappie in 1 to 2 feet of water while other anglers are catching white crappie off of brush piles in 17 feet of water. This can make it frustrating to find a pattern, but once you get a good week of consistent warm weather and the water temperature gets into the low 60s, you may have 2 full weeks to catch crappie shallow. Once the black crappie start to move out, there will still be some white crappie moving into the shallows.
Summer - It takes an experienced crappie fishermen to consistently catch crappie in the summer. These fish will move out to deeper water. Some fish will still be along the deeper creek channels, but a lot of the big schools of crappie will move out onto the main lake. Many of the guides do really well in the summer because they have numerous gps points of areas that hold brush piles. Even if you only catch a fish or two off of each brush pile, a good guide may have 50 or spots that he knows about. If you hit it right, you’ll only need to hit a few of their better spots.
Fall brings cooler water temperatures and this will help move the crappie into the creeks and bays again, although, they won’t be as shallow as they were in the spring. For those deep water crappie anglers, there will still be schools of crappie in deeper water on the main lake, especially as water temperatures cool down into the low 60s and upper 50s.
Winter fishing is tough for crappie, but they will school up in deeper water on the main lake. If you can find some of these schools, fish very slow and downsize your baits. Small jigs tipped with a live minnow, just the head of a minnow or wax worms will work. A double jig rigged with plastics can also be effective.
Some of the popular techniques for catching crappie on Kentucky Lake are veritcal jigging with small jigs tipped with tubes or live bait, bobber fishing with minnows, drop-shotting with minnows and spider rigging.
For more information on the lake, please visit Kentucky Lake.
