The action starts late on Blewett Falls, but the crappie fishing is unbeatable.
It’s hard to believe that a major public reservoir with a fantastic fishery exists with hardly anyone knowing about it. In today’s world of high technology — sonar units practically detect fish at the push of a button, internet sites broadcast the day’s fishing results in an instant and a fisherman can pick up a cell phone and tell another one, “Hey, I’m on ’em” — no place is safe.
Some fishermen have never heard of Blewett Falls Reservoir, while others swear by it. Ed Duke of Concord believes that, on certain days, Blewett Falls is the best lake in the state for crappie, especially when slabs begin staging to enter the prespawn in late winter and early spring.
“For years, Blewett Falls has been the premier, unnoticed fishing lake in the Carolinas,” said Duke, a tournament fisherman and former tournament director. “It is a small reservoir that’s a big water source for the Florence and Darlington areas, so it can fluctuate up and down. It has just two real creeks in it, Buffalo Creek and Smith Creek, both located down the lake. Everything else is river, and fish thrive in that river because it’s fertile and full of timber. Over the years, if you ever wanted to catch a 3-pound crappie and possibly a 4-pound crappie, this was the lake to fish.”
Duke said Blewett Falls tends to fish like two different bodies of water in the spring. It has its run-offs and small creeks, and crappie will stage just outside them before pulling into the shallows. It also fishes like a big expansive reservoir at times, as bigger fish tend to linger in the open water and even spawn there later in the spring.
“Crappie will move in right at the mouths of Buffalo and Smith creeks,” Duke said. “One thing you can’t overlook on Blewett Falls is that not every fish in the lake is going to spawn in shallow water. The lake has a lot of shallow flats and standing timber and a lot of these fish, when they migrate, stay locally in the timber; when it comes time to spawn, they’ll move off to the edge of the river in these flats. Main-lake fish also spawn a little bit later than the creek crappie. You can’t overlook the main lake, because it can produce some super big fish.”
Duke will use different tactics in different areas. He will long-line troll in the creeks, but due to the absence of long runs and the propensity of the main lake to hold better crappie, he generally loads his boat with his tight-line, spider-rigging gear.
“You have to watch the weather, because the fish will move out into deeper water during a cold front. I prefer long-line trolling, fishing eight to 10 feet deep, when crappie are in the creeks,” he said. “With the fast-running water, especially the way the water on Blewett fluctuates, the smartest bet a man could do would be to spider-rig, tight-line rods, eight to 10 feet deep with the weights on them. You can stay in the strike zone a whole lot longer and you can work the timber so much better.”
One of the reasons Duke likes Blewett Falls is that he can fish other nearby lakes when fish are in prespawn, and then move over to Blewett and repeat the pattern a week or two later.
“On most of these lakes, as February comes, you get the warmer, longer days, and crappie start moving closer and closer,” he said. “By the first of March, they pretty well know when they’re going to spawn. The water temperature’s warmed up into the 50s, and they’re staged up. They’re ready to go and they’re just waiting on three or four days of good 60- to 62- degree sunny weather to do their stuff.
“Blewett Falls, on the other hand, is a smaller lake and has more running water. It warms up later than lakes like Tillery and Badin. Here, you’re looking at about the middle of March before these fish start staging up. It takes about that time for the water temperature to get into the 50s for them to get in the mood.”
Probably the most-recognized modern application in crappie fishing is spider-rigging, aka tight-lining, which is as familiar as watching for blooming dogwoods. It’s a common sight on many lakes across the country; veteran fisherman Tom Sprouse of Advance remembers when he first saw the tactic, and the results it continues to produce.
“I first learned about this tactic from one of the national tournament teams,” said Sprouse, who has fished local and regional tournaments for nearly 20 years. “(It was called) ‘slow, vertical trolling,’ but most of the tournament anglers now just call it tight-lining.”
Like Duke, Sprouse favors tight-lining at Blewett Falls. The winding Yadkin-Pee Dee River channel is the lake’s major artery, making it the major travel corridor for crappie in the spring. Whether pushing all the rods from the front or splitting the duties front and back, it makes a great search tool.
“Once you get the hang of it, it’s not as hard as it looks,” said Sprouse. “There’s definitely a system involved. A lot of teams will fish two anglers side by side in the front of the boat and leave the back open; other anglers prefer to fish one in the front of the boat and one in the back.
“I like to tight-line when crappie are concentrated in a small area such as a deep brush pile or on a channel drop or bend in the river channel,” he said. “I find them by trolling along the edge of a river ledge and find that there might be only one spot every 200 to 300 yards that will hold fish.”
Blewett Falls is one of the most fertile reservoirs in North Carolina. It grows fish large and fast and has a tremendous forage base. Those are reasons that Duke and Sprouse insist on fishing either live bait or tipping their artificials with minnows.
“I put straight minnows on some of the rods and jig and minnow combos on the others and let the fish decide what they want on a given day,” Sprouse said, “but I always use live bait—whether it’s by itself or paired with a jig.”
In the spring, fishermen can boost their trolling speed a little rather than spending much time hovering in one spot. Sprouse prefers a 2-hook rig, which requires a minimum of .5 mph trolling speed to deploy correctly. It requires a balanced speed versus using Duke’s choice of a single-hook Carolina rig.
“I like about a 10- to 15-degree angle from vertical,” Sprouse said. “That makes the rig lay out right; too fast and the rigs will lay out flat and maybe tangle together, and too slow and the baits get tangled in the rig. If I’m on a good spot, I’ll just troll the boat in a wide circle, catching fish as I go.”
DESTINATION INFORMATION
HOW TO GET THERE — Blewett Falls Reservoir is a 2,560-acre on the Pee Dee River between Wadesboro and Rockingham a few miles north of the South Carolina line that forms the border between Anson and Richmond counties. reservoir. The main public boat landing is off Power Plant Road, north and west of the Pee Dee River bridge on US 74 West.
TACTICS — Slow, vertical trolling, aka spider-rigging or tight-lining, is a great tactic for locating and catching crappie that will be moving into prespawn patterns by first of March and going into high gear by the middle of the month. Rods in the 14- to 16-foot range are extended around the boat fishing tight-line rigs that employ egg sinkers up to an ounce that hold single or double rigs nearly vertical while trolling at speeds of around a half-mile an hour. When a productive spot is found, the angler can hover over the spot or troll around in circles to hit all sides of the structure. Having a good sonar unit to keep track of the bottom and locate fish holding structure is essential. A great pattern is to troll along the edge of a channel edge, drop off, especially around submerged timber until fish are located.
GUIDES/FISHING INFO — Ed Duke, Southern Crappie Rods, 704-791-0108, 704-784-1723, www.southerncrappierods.com; Carolina Crappie Association, www.carolinacrappieassociation.com; Duke Energy Yadkin-Pee Dee River Project, 800-777-9898, www.duke-energy.com/lakes/yadkin-peedee-pigeon-river.
ACCOMMODATION — Anson County Chamber of Commerce, 704-694-4181, www.ansoncounty.org; Richmond County Chamber of Commerce, 910-895-9058, www.richmondcountychamber.com.
MAPS — Delorme North Carolina Atlas & Gazetteer, 800-561-5105, www.delorme.com; Navionics Electronic Charts, 6 Thatcher Lane, Wareham, MA 02571; Fishing Hot Spots, 800-ALLMAPS, www.fishinghotspots.com.
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