Crooked Creek Lake offers diverse fishing
Crooked Creek Lake provides a diverse warm-water fishery, as demonstrated by a trip my friend Sid Brown and I made there last week.
One of several U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lakes located on major Allegheny River tributaries, Crooked Creek Lake covers around 350 acres at normal summer pool, which is an elevation of approximately 840 feet above sea level.
Its primary function is flood control, so it's subject to dramatic rises is water level during rainy weather, of which we've had an abundance of recently.
While afternoon thunderstorms were forecast for the day of our outing, the morning turned out to be mostly dry and windless. Our target species was crappie, of which the lake has an abundance.
After leaving the lake's sole boat launch, we set up along a nearby section of shoreline that had an abundance of woody laydowns. It only took a few casts for Sid to score the morning's first crappie. He was using an eighth ounce leadhead jig dressed with a one-inch chartreuse twister tail body, and was swimming it slowly among the submerged branches of the tree.
While Sid was swimming the small jig/plastic, I opted for a Roadrunner jig, an “underspin” leadhead jig that also sports a spinner blade, in this case a willow leaf blade. I dressed the Roadrunner with a two-tone yellow/pink plastic trailer.
Continuing to work our way down the laydown-rich shoreline, I had a strong fish swim out and nail the Roadrunner. In the lake's turbid water, its identity wasn't revealed until it was nearly boat side, when a chunky channel catfish was netted.
Though typically thought of as a species that responds best to various live and dead baits still-fished, channel cats are actually active, effective predators more than willing to intercept a moving bait. During our morning outing, we caught several more forktails, up to four pounds, by swimming jigs near wood cover.
In addition to channel cats, we also caught several nice largemouths, up to three pounds, on the micro-sized jigs. Add to that a handful of bluegills and green sunfish. As for the targeted crappies, they showed up in abundance as we caught around three dozen, though mostly small. Most of the sunfish were taken by Sid when he added a one-inch Berkley Gulp Alive hellgrammite to his jig.
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's most recent survey, done in 2017, illustrated the diversity of the Crooked Creek Lake fishery. Over 200 channel cats were collected in trap nets during that survey, which was specifically targeted at that species.
About three-quarters of the netted cats were over 15 inches in length, topping off at 28 inches. Crappies were also abundant, white crappies mostly, but black crappies were present also in small numbers. Over half the white crappies netted were over nine inches, with the biggest going a whopping 16 inches.
Due to it's widely fluctuating levels, and turbid water color, Crooked Creek Lake typically does not feature much in the way of submergent vegetation. Primary fish cover is in the way of shoreline wood as well as rocky ledges.
Also expect to find mats of floating wood stacked up against the shore, particularly after high water events. Older shoreline laydowns will not feature much in the way of underwater branches due to deterioration over the years. More recent laydowns still retain arteries of branches and are more likely to hold higher numbers of crappies.
There is no horsepower limit on Crooked Creek Lake, though a no-wake zone existed in the lower end of the reservoir. The lake quickly gets shallow (with extensive shoals) up-lake of the boat launch. Maximum depth at summer pool is around 30 feet.
Phone 724-763-3161 for daily information of lake and recreation information.
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle
