Cold Front Crappie

Location: Cedar Creek Reservoir - Alabama

Time: 7:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Air Temperature: 44 degrees AM, high of 60
Water Temperature: 66 - 68 degrees
Lake Level: 580.93’ - 6-8 inches lower that I like, but not bad.
Weather Conditions: Terribly windy.  12 mph North, North-West. Gusts of 20 mph.  Very cold wind chill effect.

A storm moved through on Thursday morning and brought a serious cold front with it that settled over us Thursday night.  This made for a chilly start of the morning with an air temp of 44 degrees and a wind chill of about 39 degrees.  The north wind was very cold and made fishing some of my favorite spots too rough to stay in place and be able to fish bobbers or vertical jig.

I tried my typical spots, but the pump house bay didn't produce at all and the bushes by the levee only had a few stray fish in there.  I couldn't stay in place over my tree top where I had good luck on Monday and struggled to pull a couple crappie out of it.

I knew if I were to have any luck at all, I needed to focus on the north banks where I was protected from the wind.  I also decided to explore some of the far east portions of the lake that I had never visited before.

I found a nice bay around the bend and set up with my bobber and minnow setup and picked up a couple decent largemouth and a single crappie.  Then I found a very large deep water blow down tree top in the bend a little further upstream.  Here jigging worked better with my red and chartreuse tube jig.  I pulled 3-4 out of this area.

I repeated all my spots and only picked up a stray crappie or two along the way before deciding to go up to Lost Creek and try some spots I had good luck with in 2018.  No luck at all in the small inlets on the east side of Lost Creek bay, so I rode over to the boat docks on the west side.  The boat dock owners had sank several Christmas trees around the boat docks and I managed to pull 2-3 out of here.  I then went back and repeated all my morning locations with no more luck.

In summary, the cold front seems to have scattered the fish and driven the females deeper.  I caught 13 total with 8 large enough to keep, but these fish were hard to come by and definitely very scattered.  Hoping to try again tomorrow morning and see if conditions stabilize and I can do a little better.  It is supposed to be slightly better conditions.