A few isolated trees standing in 20 feet of water can offer the perfect starting point in any lake for beginning and veteran crappie anglers alike. Just as a beaver lodge or a laydown offers textbook crappie cover, standing trees are a visible target that will often hold a school of quality fish. Of course, when it’s 10,000 or 20,000 trees you’re facing, that’s an entirely different situation — one that can bring the most skilled crappie angler to his knees. With so much great-looking cover, the hardest part is simply, “Where do I start?”

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The good news is that timber-filled lakes are often some of the most productive crappie waters anywhere. They tend to be more fertile than lakes barren of cover, and that provides an incredible source of food from the bottom of the food chain to the top. In other words, a lake full of standing timber likely will have lots of quality fish. You still have to find them, of course, but expert crappie fishermen agree that it’s not as hard as it may seem.

A Starting Point
For South Carolina angler Whitey Outlaw, finding crappie in a lake full of cover is simply a process of patient elimination. Just as he spends time searching for fish in a lake filled with sunken brush or lined with docks, he works lots of different spots until he keys in on a specific pattern. There are, however, certain rules he will follow that help him remove some of the doubt about where to begin.
“I always study a map if it is available, and I’ll ride around for a little while just looking at my graph and trying to get a feel for the bottom,” he says. “In most lakes with lots of cover, the fish will relate to the bottom first and then the cover second.”
Bert Bennett, a nine-time Classic qualifier from Malden, Mo., agrees. Although it’s easy to key on what’s going on above the water, he tends to ignore the endless great-looking cover by focusing on the bottom structure.
Bennett and Outlaw will first search for structure such as defined creek channels near the main lake, as well as the main creek or river channel that cuts through the lake itself. Crappie use those channels as staging areas and travel lanes throughout the year, so there’s a good chance fish will be somewhere on a channel in a timber-filled lake.
Both experts also like to find humps, sharp ledges and any other bottom contour that allows the fish to move up and down in the water column without traveling a long distance. In winter, crappie will rise and fall as the day warms and then cools, so sharp drop-offs and other defined structure are great places to start looking for fish.
Bennett also seeks points, particularly underwater points that drop off into deep water. In many cases, those tree-covered points are easy to find without a depthfinder.
“If there isn’t a map available, you can often get an idea of what’s going on underwater by looking at the shoreline,” he says. “If a point of dry land comes out into the water, it probably follows the same general contour underwater as well. I just follow the trees out from the shore and watch my depthfinder until the point hits the creek or river channel, and I work the timber on the end of that point.”

Cover The Cover
Bennett and Outlaw say it’s simply a matter of hitting lots of spots until they find fish. Although Outlaw may have complete confidence in a line of standing trees on the edge of a defined creek channel, the fish may not be in that exact spot. That’s why he’ll work the cover a little ways from the channel itself.
“This time of year, the fish tend to stay close to the creek channels and points, but they will venture up onto adjacent flats to feed, particularly as the day warms up,” he says. “As the sun goes down, they will move back to channels, ledges and the deeper side of humps. I’ve done well by moving back to the edges of those channels in the evenings.”
Outlaw will also probe a variety of depths on each piece of cover. Although water clarity will often dictate depth, there are no fixed rules when it comes to finding crappie.
Bennett has caught fish just 2 feet below the surface in late winter from lakes with visibility limited to just a few inches. However, in ultra-clear lakes, he typically catches fish much deeper. Both anglers also agree that in clear lakes, crappie tend to hug the shaded sides of standing timber.

Once they catch a fish, Outlaw and Bennett make some mental notes of the spot. One fish may not make a pattern, but a few crappie from one specific spot can be a pretty good indication of where to search elsewhere in the lake. For instance, if he catches crappie in timber on the edge of a creek channel in 20 feet of water near the mouth of the creek arm, Outlaw will hit as many similar areas as he can find to establish a pattern. It usually works.
“Crappie are fairly predictable that way,” he adds.

Sweet Spots
Even with such good advice, the overwhelming amount of cover even in a small reservoir can be intimidating. A single creek channel can be lined with hundreds of standing trees, and it might take days to fish all of them. However, there are spots within spots that seem to hold more fish than others.
When Outlaw finds a defined creek channel, he searches for sharp bends, high banks adjacent to that channel or a point that drops down to meet the channel itself. Those are what many anglers call high-percentage areas — places that have several key ingredients in a single spot. Once they find places where a combination of features meet, they’ll start fishing.
Even on tree-covered flats that have little in the way of physical characteristics, there are certain things that are worth at least a few casts. Bennett often finds fish on fallen trees that angle upward from deeper water to the surface. That not only gives the fish overhead cover and the security that comes with it, but it also gives them the freedom to move up and down. One of his most reliable spots in virtually any lake with standing timber is a large tree with large branches on a point near deep water.
“I like to find something different,” says Bennett. “If I’m fishing a lake filled with timber and it all looks alike, I might spend some time working anything that isn’t like the rest of the cover.”
When Outlaw is on a new lake or searching for new spots on his home waters, he’ll seek out anything that doesn’t blend in with the rest of the surroundings. That’s not to say the fish won’t be on one tree that looks like all the others. Instead, focusing on something like a vertical log in a slew of horizontal ones simply gives him a specific target.
“I also like to spend time on such things as isolated trees that aren’t in the middle of a big, flooded forest,” he says. “I also probe a clump of brushy trees in the middle of a bunch of straight, clean trunks.”

Getting To The Fish
Once he finds an area that holds potential, Outlaw will typically use a B’n’M Santee Elite Series pole, a line-through-blank rod that comes in lengths of 10, 11 and 12 feet. What he uses depends on how thick the cover is, as well as the size of the boat he’s fishing from. He’ll often choose the shortest length if he thinks he’ll be fishing extra-thick trees.
“If I’m fishing isolated stumps or fairly open trees, a longer rod will work better because I won’t have to move as much to hit all the cover around me,” he explains. “However, a shorter rod will make it easier to move my bait in thicker trees.”
The guideless rod also gives him another distinct advantage that a typical spinning rod won’t. Since the B’n’M Santee Elite rod doesn’t have guides hanging from the rod shaft, he doesn’t have to worry about snagging limbs with the rod guides. That can cause no shortage of headaches as he pokes his rod tip deep within brushy trees.
Neither Outlaw nor Bennett will actually cast a bait in flooded timber. That will only lead to an endless amount of snagged hooks as the jig falls over underwater branches. Instead, they drop their baits next to or even straight down among the tangle of limbs or alongside a smooth, straight tree trunk.
While many anglers who fish heavy cover prefer hooks with wire or plastic weedguards, Outlaw favors hooks with exposed points.
“I’d rather lose a 10-cent jig than a 2-pound fish,” he says. “I used to fish jigheads with the weedguards built in to them, but I noticed I missed an awful lot of fish. One time a buddy and I were fishing together, and I was using a hook with a weedguard, and he wasn’t. It was pretty obvious by the end of the day which one was a better choice. He put a whole lot more fish in the boat than I did that day.”
Bennett also favors jigheads with exposed hooks for the same reason. He’s tried virtually every weedless hook style on the market, from wire weedguards to monofilament and even plastic tubes that slip over the hook point. None gives him the hook-setting ability that a bare hook will.
“My son, who fishes a lot of tournaments with me, can work a jighead down into the thickest tree on any lake and back up again without getting hung up,” he says. “It takes practice, but it can be done. It’s really just a matter of feeling the bait as it’s dropping through the limbs.”
To accomplish that, Bennett prefers to lower his bait down through the limbs slowly, stopping the bait every foot or so and moving his rod tip to keep the bait from resting on a limb. He never allows the lure to free-fall through the limbs to the bottom.
“You have to stay in contact with the bait to know what’s going on as it’s dropping,” he says. “Otherwise, it may just be sitting on a branch or a fish may have it. You won’t know.”
With a little patience, however, you will know that finding crappie in a lake full of standing timber isn’t as difficult as it may seem. All that cover may look intimidating, but pick it apart and you’ll figure out a pattern that will lead you to all the prime spots throughout the lake.



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