Rebound Crappie

A Lake Tillery angler has winter slab fishing figured out and lands giants while everyone else is inside by a warm fire.

Ed Duke is just thrilled few people except local anglers fish Lake Tillery — especially during the winter.He loves pulling into the parking lot at the boat ramp and having his pick of every single parking space. He loves not having to take a number or get in line to fish a likely looking spot. And he loves to catch big, slab crappie.

That may be the single biggest reason why Duke, a building contractor who is executive director of the Southern Crappie Association, doesn’t really like to travel too far from his Cabarrus County home in Concord.

If you had Lake Tillery less than 30 minutes from your back door, would you fish anywhere else?

“Tillery has been a comeback fishery over the past few years,” Duke said. “It had dropped down during the early 2000s, but the past two years, it’s started to make a comeback. It’s one of the lakes that’s a real sleeper now — especially for producing some monster crappie. One of the last 3-pound crappie I caught came from Tillery.

“The quality of the fish at Tillery now is excellent. It has, on the average, probably bigger crappie than any other lake on the Yadkin chain. There may not be as many fish as there are in High Rock, but they’re probably bigger, fish for fish, as far as average size per fish.

“Very seldom do I go to Tillery and catch fish that aren’t keepers.”

Duke said the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission manages the lake with an 8-inch size minimum and 20-fish daily creel limit.

“Just about every fish you catch is big enough to fillet, and crappie that weigh a pound, pound-and-a-half are plentiful at Tillery right now — if someone knows how to fish the structure,” he said.

The “structure” Duke so loves to fish are channels, ledges and dropoffs. In the winter, that’s where he finds crappie. His equation is structure-plus-cover-equals big slabs. But you have to be willing to fish places that most crappie fishermen detest — deep water.

“Tillery is a clear, deep-water lake, and naturally, crappie have a tendency in water like that, when the temperature drops, to move to deeper water,” Duke said. “That gives them more protection when a front comes in. And if the water happens to get warmer, they just move up in the water column. They don’t leave deep-water areas from November through January.

“The end of January is when the water temperatures start rising, and crappie have a natural inclination to start moving again. They’ll go to the mouths of creeks where they have deep water close by, because they need the security. They’re staged up, waiting for the weather to warm up, and they’ve got sanctuary close by.”

Two main options exist for fishing those deep areas: docks and brush piles. And Duke fishes both — all the time.

The key, again, is finding deep water. He will rarely fish any shallower than 10 feet, and most of the time, he’s looking for structure and cover anywhere from 15 to 25 feet below the surface.

“Dock fishing at Tillery is good if you can find some docks in deep water — 15 to 20 feet — with some 25- to 30-foot water close by. They’ll have that protection they want,” Duke said. “Tillery is a deep lake, but it doesn’t have many deep banks. There are very few deep-water docks with 20 feet of water. You have to go find them.”

Duke said local fishermen know where the good deep docks are, and most of those docks have been “sweetened” by the addition of brush piles on every side, but especially in front.

“A lot of people will drop a little brush in front of the dock to give the fish more protection,” he said.

But Duke isn’t all that interested in fishing brush piles around docks. If he’s located a man-made pier or dock that has 15 or 20 feet of water under its pilings, he is fishing the dock proper — with an outfit that would surprise a lot of people. He uses an extremely light, limber rod to “shoot” tiny mini-jigs well back up under the dock, then lets them sink all the way to the bottom, tantalizing any fish that might be hiding down alongside the pier posts.

“I will use a 3-foot-long rod when I’m shooting a jig back up under a dock,” Duke said. “You take the top half off a two-piece rod and turn it into a 3-foot rod (by adding a reel seat). Then, you take a closed-face Zebco (spincast) reel, because it’s easier to shoot back under a dock than an open-face. You just mash the button, and it locks in place, and you shoot the jig back under there.”

Duke almost always uses live minnows during the winter months — except when he’s dock fishing.

“Around docks, I use small hair jigs; you need an artificial because you’re going to be working the bait,” he said. “I’ll use a Babb Fly or Hal Fly in 1/24- or 1/32-ounce.

“I shoot it up under the dock and just let it drop all the way to the bottom, then reel it slowly back in. They generally hit it on the fall — if a fish is gonna take it, he’s gonna take it on the fall. And you feel the strike.”

Brush piles are Duke’s best targets. He says he will occasional sink one himself — he likes the mid-section of small oak trees, preferring a tree with only a half-dozen or so branches protruding from the trunk — but he’s found dozens and generally has a “milk run” of about 10 to 12 docks that he’ll fish in a day’s time.

“Deep-water brush piles are the best way to catch big crappie at Tillery,” he said. “All of my brush is in 20 to 25 feet of water, and it’s close to a dropoff. And the brush piles I put in aren’t that brushy. I cut off the trunk part of the tree and the branches at the top. You might only have seven or eight branches left, but as long as a crappie can hide one of his eyes, he thinks he’s in cover. And I’ve found that bigger fish don’t like to get tangled up in all kinds of brush.

“You can catch a lot of small fish if you put in a real brushy brush pile, plus maybe an occasional big fish. But most big fish don’t want to mess with little limbs. If you give them one or two limbs, they’re going to think they’re hidden.”

Duke keeps a dozen or so 1-gallon milk jugs. He’ll cut off the “mouth” of the jug and fill it with concrete, letting it harden and keeping the handle so he’ll be able to lash it to the brush he wants to sink.

“You wait for the dirtiest, nastiest day when you know nobody will be on the water; that’s when you work on your brush,” Duke said. “It doesn’t have to be big. I make sure I attach the jugs to the bottom so the top will be sticking up. A big fish really doesn’t need a lot of stuff to hide out in.”

Duke typically locates his brush at the main portion of the lake. In the winter, he doesn’t fish back in creeks at all — at least not past the mouth of a creek.

“When I put out brush, I put it out on points in 20 to 25 feet of water. I’ll find flats at the mouth of a creek that have drops close to deep water or boat docks, so the fish have a variety of places to go.

“I’ll have 10 or 12 brush piles I’ll fish. You might catch one, two or three fish off a pile, then you move on to the next one. Very seldom does a brush pile fisherman go to Tillery and not come back with a limit.”

Duke’s outfit for fishing deep brush piles is simple. He sets rod holders up around the bow of his Ranger boat and fishes four rods — 8-foot light-action Wally Marshall BPS or B&M Crappie Poles. He matches them with light-action spinning rods and 4-pound test mono, then ties on a No. 6 gold hook and crimps off a No. 7 split shot a foot or so up the line.

The business end, the hook, is largely hidden by the bait — a big minnow. Duke doesn’t believe in using small crappie minnows; he wants to feed winter slabs a big meal.

“When I’m fishing Tillery in the winter, I do want a bigger bait,” he said. “In that clear water, I want something they can see, so they know they can go get a good meal. Day-in and day-out, I’ll fish a live shiner at Tillery because a big fish will eat a big bait.”

Duke said he likes 3-inch minnows — a lot of tackle shops will sell them as “medium” bass minnows, but they’re really candy to a crappie.

“Most people think a 3-inch minnow is too big, but a lot of crappie won’t hit a small minnow. And I know which tackle shops sell bigger minnows for crappie,” he said.

Since he’s got the transducer for his bow-mounted depth-finder on the bottom of his trolling motor, Duke feels like he can position his boat — and his rods — almost directly over a brush pile that he has located. If the brush pile has branches or limbs that extend 5 or 10 feet off the bottom, he’ll fish the top layer of branches first, then allow his minnow to dip closer and closer to the bottom.

“I start right at the top of the brush, maybe 10-feet deep, because crappie will be looking up when they feed about 99 percent of the time,” he said. “I clear water, they can be 15-feet deep, and they can see that minnow right up on top of the brush, and then can look up and go get it.

“Then, you can work it deeper. You drop it down 10, 12, then 15 feet until you get it in what their strike zone is that day. And you’ll notice, the water will be so clear you’ll see that fish when he’s 6- or 7-feet deep when you’re bringing him in.”

Duke said early in the winter, from Thanksgiving until late January, he fishes the lower end of the lake, from the N.C. 24/27 bridge downstream to Norwood Dam. That’s where the majority of the deeper water is in the 5,260-acre reservoir, which was impounded in 1928 and is operated by Progress Energy.

“Tillery’s crappie have this traditional pattern,” he said. “They go to deep water in the winter and stay there. A good rule of thumb is, fish below the bridge in the winter. Then, around the end of January, fish will start to move up above the bride toward Mountain Creek.”

Duke said Mountain Creek is one of the best spots above the bridge. Fish will hang around the mouth of Jacobs Creek in 25 to 30 feet of water.

“It has everything the fish need,” he said. “It has shallow flats in the back for the spawn, and it holds shad year-round. One of the other best places is Rocky Creek. The Swift Island Access area in Rocky Creek gets a whole lot of boat traffic, but if you’re patient, the mouth of Rocky Creek has some good, good fish in January. There are several points that come out around the mouth.”

Fishermen who venture out on Tillery in January will have the lake basically to themselves, Duke said.

“High Rock, Badin and Tuckertown get a lot more fishing pressure than Tillery,” he said. “Tillery is just a little farther down the chain; it’s one of those lakes that people other than the locals don’t really fish. There are a lot of people who think it doesn’t have a lot of fish.”

Lawrence Dorsey, a fisheries biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission whose area covers the southern piedmont and includes Lake Tillery, said the entire Yadkin/Pee Dee River system in North Carolina has pretty good crappie fishing — including Tillery.

“The lower Yadkin doesn’t get exceptional year classes, but we never have gaps where we don’t see fish in certain age classes,” Dorsey said. “Tillery is a good lake. There isn’t heavy, heavy (population) density, but you see some very nice fish.”