Cedar Creek Reservoir
April 11-14, 2022
Air Temperature: Lows around 60 degrees, Highs 66-82 Degrees
Lake Level: 580.15 - 580.65
Weather Conditions: Partly Cloudy. Very windy. Variable
This week kicked off our annual family crappie fishing week. My brother-in-law has a new baby, so we invited my Dad's father-in-law out for the week.
April 11th, Monday
We arrived at the cabins mid day and got settled in Ronnie arrived around 2:30 and we were anxious to get on the water. The weather forecast had been changing constantly and was calling for a potential windy and wet week. This afternoon was forecast to actually be the best weather of the week, so we definitely needed to give it a go. Weather was sunny and a little cool with the temp around 66 degrees. The wind was blowing strong from the south and the southern bays were pretty much the only thing we could fish comfortably. We tried all my regular spots, but struggled quite a bit figuring out how to fish in the high wind and be successful. Not much activity in the shallows. We managed to pull out 7 nice keepers in the in about 3 hours and threw several shorts back.
We came back to the cabin and cooked burgers. We might not have caught a lot of fish, but we had a great time sharing stories and had a better game plan for the next day.
April 12th, Tuesday
Today as fairly cloudy and overcast and the barrage of southern winds carried on stronger than the day before. We had to delay our morning a bit due to lingering showers but finally started out the day trying to fish some deeper water given the limited success from the previous day in the shallows. However, we didn't have much more luck in the deeper water. We tried a couple different approaches and picked up some scattered fish. We ended up moving back into the shallows after lunch and the fish had seemed to move in there a little better. I don't fish the 2nd southern bay east of the levee much, but a fallen tree on the east bank produced very well. The wind still made it a struggle, but we ended up keeping 12 good fish with close to that many shorts thrown back. We missed several as we were having a good time and not paying as much attention as we probably should have.
We came back in and fried some crappie for dinner. It was excellent.
April 13th, Wednesday
The weather man said today would be the absolute worst weather day and it would be wet, but thankfully, he missed his mark. Cloudy morning turned into a fairly clear afternoon, the the wind still would not relent. We concentrated on shallows again as the day was warmer than the previous. We definitely noticed a trend where the fish were moving shallow better as the day warmed. We picked up fish much more quickly today and were picking up a couple good crappie at every stop. The fish also had good size to them. We weren't throwing as many back. We probably had around a dozen fish by lunch and decided to find a bank with some shade and wind cover to take a picnic. After lunch, as we were pulling off the bank, Dad noticed some brush in the shallow water near where we parked the boat and suggested we give it a try. It was on the east bank in a spot I had never fished. We have it a try..
And BINGO. We found them.
The fish were holding transitional structure in about 4-7 FOW in an area that had a lot of man made brush piles. We floated minnows over top of the structure and began pounding the crappie. Over the next couple hours, we managed to put a lot more big fish in the boat and ended the day with 30 keepers. We threw back half a dozen or so and lost that many as well due to bad hook sets. Late in the day I re-rigged us with sharper hooks. These last couple hours were exactly what we were looking for. We had a blast and were so happy the weather had cooperated (except for the wind).
Ronnie had to head back to Arkansas tonight, so we came in a bit early and cooked a nice steak dinner to send him of with. We sure had a blast with him and he was quite a fisherman. We had a great time bonding and look forward to doin it again.
We spent a good bit of time packing tonight to make our checkout the next morning a little quicker.
April 14th, Thursday
It stormed badly overnight. Dad and I weren't in a terrible hurry. We had to finish packing and check out, but after the prior afternoon results, we definitely wanted to get on the water for a couple hours before driving home. We finally got on the water mid morning and started the day off where we had had so much luck the yesterday. We caught some fish there, but nothing like the previous day, so we tried some other spots and pick up several fish along the way. As the morning went on, the water turned a deep mud brown as rain brought runoff into the lake. We realized pretty quickly that fish were not biting in the muddy water areas, but were doing much better in areas that stayed clear. There was a definite gradient, so we stuck to clearer water. We had intended to leave right after lunch, but stopped by the south bank near the ramp as a final stop on the way in and found the fish here again. I concentrated on fishing shallow brush, whereas Dad was throwing a bobber a little deeper over sunken structure and allowing it to float through 4-7 FOW. We were both catching fish regularly. We had such a good time here doing this that we ended up staying a couple hours longer than we mean to, but we ended up putting 22 more keepers in the boat. It was an excellent way to wrap up our trip,
We finally called it quits and hit the road. It was a fantastic week that was a big improvement over last year. I believe we ended up with 71 keeper crappie and probably caught 90+ all together counting the shorts. We're already talking about next year.
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