Deep-water crappie tools

Both Whitey Outlaw and Buster Rush rely on electronics to help them target crappie holding around cover in deep water.

“I prefer fishing the shallow upper end of the lake during the fall, but I will fish deep brush at times,” Outlaw said. “Anytime I fish over 10 feet deep, I feel a quality graph is essential.

“I use a Hummingbird 1199 with side-scan and down-scan capability to help identify targets with fish and then set up where I can work into the wind and fish the top and edges of the brush or other cover,” he said. “I use side-scan to depict the brush and cover and the down-scan to stay right on top of the fish.

“It enables me to see when the fish are not present,, and when they’re gone, so am I,” Outlaw said.” I don’t sit on unproductive areas, because there are too many good places during October, both shallow and deep.”

Outlaw said there’s an ongoing program to upgrade a lot of the existing underwater public fishing spots on Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie.

“They’re doing a great job of refurbishing these sites and the latitude and longitude numbers for these sites are listed on the SCDNR website, so anyone with a good graph can go straight to them.”

Outlaw said with the side-scan he can spot the public brush, or any brush pile, off either side of the boat and then lock in the coordinate and fish it.

“It’s high-tech, and it is changing the way crappie fishermen fish,” he said. “It’s enabling us to find more potential crappie-holding places much quicker. That simply means more fish caught in a day of fishing.”