Some Partially Submerged Trees Provide Great Cover, Some Don't: How To Tell The Difference
Story and Photos By Vic Attardo

One of the hottest programs on cable television is a western called "Deadwood." They could have taken the name and made a very good fishing show. It'd be about crappie that hang close to fallen trees, felled either by nature or by man.

If they actually created this rousing show, it would star some of the largest crappie on screen. For a fact, both white and black crappie are attracted to deadwood, or deadfalls, like Hollywood stars are attracted to each other.

Simply put, deadfalls are trees or heavy branches that drop from the shoreline into the water. Their journey from land can have many causes. Aged or dead trees break off, and if the bank is slanted, they tip down into the water.

Storms are obviously the largest cause of trees being ripped up at the roots. Strong winds push them over, and so can excessive rains that soften the ground and loosen their footing. Often a powerful windstorm will slice rows of trees.

While the effects of a storm may not be good elsewhere, a line of wind-blown deadfalls can be a bonanza for the crappie angler. In addition, floods or high water in reservoirs can fell large trees.

Beavers are another major producer of deadfalls. The flat-tail rodents can send long trunks sliding into the water. When dragging a large branch, they also might give up and leave it where it lies.

However, not all deadfalls are created equal, nor will they all hold good numbers of crappie. Trees that jut only a few feet into a shallow bank are generally not crappie havens. The longer the trunk and the farther it extends into deep water, the more likely it is to contain a collection of crappie.

Another consideration is the structure of the deadwood. While trees free of twigs and tips don't cause many snags, they also might not be the best crappie homes. However, wood that's full of snares and traps with twisted shoots, gnarled and knotted branches and trunks entwined like snakes can be a hot house for crappie.

One more thing to consider about deadfalls is whether the tree was previously dead, without leaves, or if it fell into the water while still green and fresh. Leafy trees have a way of attracting shoreline crappie almost immediately, while a long-dead tree without green appendages may lose its crappie appeal over time.

One of the juiciest places to find a number of crappie is beside a tree that is still producing green leaves above the water line. The shade from these branches, plus the naturally attracting wood cover, leads to a growing-season bonus of crappie.

Working Deadfalls
Dale Kirby is a crappie angler who understands the value of deadfalls. Plying the waters of Lake Herrington near his home in Lancaster, Ky., Kirby looks for the densest tangles he can find, then dabs his bait into the surface holes.

Upper Lake Herrington contains narrow, deep waters that move between high-walled banks of grey shale, some dripping with waterfalls as tall as 30 feet, as well as flat, barely sloped soft banks. Lake Herrington dams the Dix River, which eventually empties into the Kentucky River, causing the lake to fluctuate 50 vertical feet through the course of a season. Since its construction in the 1920s, strong flows have built up extensive mud flats and carved niches from rock shelves.

"The lake is so narrow and there is so much watershed around it, it doesn't take much to muddy it up," says local lodge owner Jim Bryant Jr.

When Herrington muddies, it often carries great islands of wood and debris over the surface. With the deadfalls that drop from rock shelves and the deadwood deposited along mud banks, anglers like Kirby have a world of wood to work.

Kirby's ritual for fishing Herrington actually begins off the lake. The veteran angler traps his own minnows from a local pond. While the maxim "big bait for big fish" is true, Kirby prefers his minnows on the small side, typically only 1½ inches.

"Small bait for tight places," he says. "I've always had better luck with smaller minnows in these spots. The crappie seem to bite the smaller minnows quicker than the big stuff. With a big minnow, they swim around with it, and you can't let them swim in these tangles."

At the same time, Kirby notes that smaller minnows are easier to lose because crappie quickly pull them off. Basically, it's a trade-off, but the deciding factor goes to tight spots.

As he lowered his electric motor, Kirby moved beside a fallen tree with leaves still blooming from both its submerged and above-water branches. I wondered how water-covered limbs could produce fresh leaves, but then thought back to what Bryant had said about intense fluctuations in the lake. Though the leaves were covered today, they might have been exposed the day before. Technically, you couldn't call this wood a deadfall. Kirby referred to it as a green tree.

"The last two or three times we've fished up here, crappie were on the green trees," he said. "They fell into the water sometime this spring, and we took fish off them almost right away."

With the electrics on low, Kirby maneuvered within a rod's length of the green tree's outer tips while using a 10-foot rod. At the end of his line was a small minnow. Higher up he had a slip-bobber and all the rig's accoutrements.

"You want the minnow's head hanging down," he explained, "so you hook it in the tail."

As Kirby glided into position beside the tree, he noted the crappie were still in the prespawn stage.

"They're moving in from the channel to the wood, so this green tree is a new home for them," he said. "With the fluctuations we've had with rain and dam operations, they've been confused. They haven't always been where they're supposed to be."

Kirby dabbed the bait along the edge of the green tree's outer tips, then picked it up and placed it closer in. Each time, he went farther and farther into the thick tangles. He kept a steady hand and managed to insert a minnow and bobber into openings no more than 6 square inches.

As Kirby drew near a fork in some secondary branches, his line swayed even before the bobber rested on the water. He quickly lifted the rod, setting the hook and pulling the 10-inch crappie through the hole.

"That's a start," he smiled.

Kirby's 10-foot crappie rod was equipped with a closed-face, push-button spinning reel. While I initially fiddled with the button on my borrowed outfit, Kirby barely touched the release. All of his casts and retrieves were done with a short, fixed length of line (about 3 or 4 feet) while raising and lowering the rod tip for position, then lifting it swiftly to yank a crappie out of the branches. Deftly using the long rod, he also had to fight the wind with his trolling motor and push away overhead branches so he could probe farther toward shore. It paid off with a number of handsome fish.

After the green tree, Kirby moved to what he called a classic deadfall. The tree had long since slid down the rocky shelves into the flowing Herrington Lake. A majority of the trunk was out of the water, at least with the current lake level, but a rich tangle of limbs, secondary branches and twigs extended some 30 feet beyond the steep shelf. Even over the water, the wood was both underneath and on the surface. What seemed especially good was that a solid portion of this deadfall was down 10 feet over the bottom.

The surprise in fishing this deadfall was that Kirby used not just one long rod but two. Free of having to maneuver through overhanging branches, he picked up a second pole and lowered the rod tips toward the surface after securing bait to both. A nice little feature was that a red-top bobber was connected to the rod in his right hand, while a yellow-top bobber was mated to his left. There was no chance of confusion under the hot Kentucky sun.

Shortly after his arrival at this deadfall, Kirby maneuvered back into the tree's sweet spot where the main trunk dipped underwater in an alluring curve. Right there the yellow bobber was pulled beneath the surface, and Kirby lifted a crappie out of the tangles faster than a sneeze. While the red bobber remained in position, the lucky rod came back under his arm, and the crappie was taken off and thrown into a bucket.

During the action, the boat had drifted back a bit, but rather than kick on the electric motor and send a pulse through the water, Kirby extended his right arm as far as he could. Floating near the crook of the trunk, the second bobber suddenly submerged, and up came another crappie.

This deep deadfall proved to be a hotspot for a number of fish. Kirby played the entire game with two rods. Sometimes the red bobber would be the first to go down, and other times it was the yellow. He didn't re-bait the hooks until both had caught fish or were missing minnows.

During the morning, Kirby jockeyed back and forth between green trees and classic deadfalls. He hit both dense sandwiches and sparse satellites. Some trees were stacked close to each other, while some were hermits with no neighbors. As long as they were over water at least 5 feet deep, they often produced.

Through the course of the day, I spotted one alluring deadfall on a mud flat. However, we zipped by it a few times on our way to other hotels. When the deadfall became shrouded in shade, Kirby moved toward it.

The tree looked like it had died in the Ice Age. It was huge and appeared older than petrified wood. The trunk disappeared in the muck, while fat branches extended above the surface.

Kirby came up easy on the mud flat. Using just one rod, he inserted the bait inches from the wood. The bobber's spike nicked the trunk as it floated. Then in seconds it was going down as if a speeding train was pulling it. Kirby couldn't lift this crappie right away. The fish struggled against the pull and only reluctantly came to the surface.

Unfortunately, the ancient deadfall was not going to give up its treasure easily. As the ham-sized crappie came out of the water, it bounced into the wood and flopped off.

"Next time," Kirby muttered.

Later I found out he was back on that deadfall the next day.

That's another good thing about fishing deadfalls. The wood isn't going anywhere for a while.