The screen of my sonar unit showed a few fish hanging above the submerged treetop, one sitting in around 35 feet of water. The uppermost branches of the wood cover extended nearly 10 feet above the lake bottom.

After stopping my boat over the spot, I lowered a quarter-ounce blade bait to the bottom, gingerly reeling a couple turns of the reel to get put in the zone of the higher branches while attempting to avoid hanging up.

Satisfied that the lure was where I wanted it, I gave it a sharp upward snap of a few inches, then permitted it to fall on a semi-slack line. After a few seconds, I repeated the snap-lower-pause deal, hoping for the tick of what I expected to be a crappie.

Within a minute or so, a fish hammered the blade bait as it hovered on the pause. Instantly, I knew it was too heavy to be a crappie. Slowly working the fish toward the surface, I was pleasantly surprised to see the outline of a nice walleye show itself in Keystone Lake’s clear waters. The 21-incher was quickly photographed and then released.

Deep wood – submerged trees (or portions of trees), brush piles, man-made cribs -- can be a magnet for a variety of fish species during the late fall. During this recent trip to Keystone, taken less than a week ago, I caught one other nice walleye, several bull-sized bluegills, a few big black crappies and a jumbo-sized yellow perch, all from offshore wood cover in the 25-to-35-foot range.

Though I wouldn’t qualify it as common, catching walleyes from deep wood isn’t rare in my experience. I’ve taken others from Keystone during the late fall and early winter, some along shoreline wood lay-downs that drop into the old creek channel. Also, cribs in the lower end of Lake Arthur have produced late-season walleyes.

On lakes such as Crooked Creek, which supports a strong population of channel catfish, it’s quite common to catch these whiskered fish on deep wood. The same holds true on Lake Arthur.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that not all deep wood cover will hold fish, and ones that do can change from day to day. There might be a group of a dozen cribs, with fish relating to only one or two. At other times, the fish seem to mill around, cruising from one crib to another.

The same is true of offshore brush piles and shoreline lay-downs. That’s why it’s important to believe in what your electronics are telling you. Even the traditional 2D sonar view on the most basic unit will give you good information as to whether fish are present. Down imaging, which is common on modern sonar units, gives much better target separation, allowing you to see fish amongst tree branches or next to sunken cribs. The same is true of side imaging, which features a much wider swath of what’s being viewed.

Here’s another example of why it’s important to be willing to move until you find cooperative fish. A couple of weeks ago, I did a quick afternoon trip to Keystone. Three or four spots produced a smallmouth and a couple largemouth, but not the crappies I was after. It was an unpleasant day complete with brief spurts of rain accompanied by gusty wind. I saw only one other boat on the water, a guy heaving big baits for muskies. Questioning whether I really needed to be out there, I decided to give one more place a shot.

As I idled over the spot, a sunken tree in around 30 feet of water and over a hundred yards off the shore, the sonar screen showed a huge cloud of baitfish, so much so it was tough to make out the tree branches. It took a few minutes to get the first fish to bite, a chunky smallmouth of around two pounds that hit a blade bait. That seemed to fire things up.

During the next hour, without moving the boat, 25 big crappies, a couple nice-sized perch, and two more bass, were all boated and released. Blade baits, live minnows and crappie-sized plastics all took fish.

Incidentally, during a subsequent trip I never took a fish from that place. Late-fall fishing can be great on deep wood cover, but you’ve got to be willing to hunt for the productive spots of the day.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle