Heartlander Abroad: Reelfoot Lake, TN

Alright, I know Reelfoot really isn't very "abroad", but I'm leaning towards moving the name of this article to "Heartlander Abroad" full-time, and with a small donation from every reader I may be able to fund being constantly abroad!

Being on the road a lot has its pros and cons, and one of those cons is not fishing my home lake in the northwest corner of Tennessee. Reelfoot Lake had a tough year for white crappie in 2014, and a lot of anglers had difficulty catching fish. What people have to remember is that all lakes are cyclical and have up and down years.

Crappie in our part of the world (lower Midwest/upper south) live to be 5-6 years old. When you have a bad spawn, like we did in two of the last six years, the crappie population will be heavily affected. Larger bodies of water, like Kentucky Lake for instance, are much less susceptible to poor spawns seriously hurting populations because there are so many different areas for crappie to spawn in, and all crappie do not spawn at the same time or in the same place. With Reelfoot being a shallow basin lake with minimal fluctuations in water levels, the spawn is much more tightly located, as well as the window it happens in.

Rapid rising or falling water, as well as unexpected extreme temperature changes and storms corresponding with the exact window of the spawn can have a devastating effect, and that was the cause of the poor population last year. Here's another tidbit to consider, crappie spawn in places they were spawned from or have successfully spawned in the past. Having fished Reelfoot since the 80's, it is clear that crappie have adapted and relocated to different spawning grounds.

The trees in Buck Basin known locally as Palestine Timber were dynamite for early April jig fishing right up until the ice storm of 2009. All the branches that fell changed the under-water landscape and the crappie have not been back since. However they didn't disappear, they just relocated to different areas. The cycle is just that, a cycle, and the lake is rebounding right now. One female crappie can lay 250,000 eggs, a few consecutive successful spawns changes everything, and Reelfoot is about to return to its hayday!

I spent the days on the water and the evenings at BlueBank Resort, enjoying the phenomenal food at the restaurant while watching the sunsets and hand-feeding the eager resident ducks scraps from my plate. BlueBank not only houses the best restaurant, lodging, and a enormous fleet of rental boats, they also have the largest guide service, headed up by the one and only Mr. Billy Blakely.

Billy and the rest of the guides have been catching good numbers of big fish, but more importantly they've been catching a ton of 4-8 inch crappie. The last two years have resulted in great spawns, and over the next couple years the fishing is going to be great.

Chippy and I fished a local tournament over the weekend and took 3rd with nearly 9-pounds, and my old buddy Larry Griffin edged us out by a few ounces for 2nd place. The fishing was tough but there were big, male crappie that the top teams came in with. As the temperature warms and becomes more consistent the spawn should level out and the jig fishing should get better.

On a separate note, my friends and one of the best pro crappie fishing teams in the country, Jeff Riddle and Slabber Dave Maddox, won the Bass Pro Shop's Crappie Master's Tournament on Beaver Lake over the weekend. These guys are as good as they come, and they're good guys to boot, so a big congratulations on the win to our local pros!

Josh M. Gowan

Outdoors Writer, Crappie Angler Magazine

www.joshgowanoutdoors.com