I spend more time fishing than writing, but I wanted to provide a quick update on Lake Crowley as things are different this year. The lake’s water level is down 20 feet and it has changed the fishing dynamics from previous years.
There weren’t as many people fishing as in past years and the boats were moving all over the lake by mid-morning. Normally, many boats would be clustered in McGee Bay all day long. I only saw one boat land a fish while on the lake in the first hour of fishing which is highly unusual.
We got to the lake around 7:00 am and I went over to my spot at Chalk Cliffs. No boats were there, but I’ve been lucky there without any of the fishing congestion at McGee. After not getting a bite in 20 minutes, I moved over to popular area by McGee where all the other boats were clustered.
Most of the boats were clustered there, but I didn’t see anyone catching anything. Within 30 minutes I went over to Alligator Point. We caught our first trout within 15 minutes using rainbow PB. The second trout took about 10 minutes, then the third around 15 minutes. I switched to inflated night crawlers and the fishing picked up with multiple hookups and we caught our limits within the hour.
No one was really fishing Alligator Point and it was quite nice. My spot is when you come up to the Alligator’s neck where the beach ends. We anchored the boat around 40 yards out from shore. I cast out 20 yards towards the Alligator’s imaginary eye.
When I cast out further I noticed the bait would hit bottom as a normal cast would. When I cast shorter, the bait hit bottom, then pulled out another 10 feet of line. I knew then, I was in the drop off of the ledge and that’s where the trout were feeding.
Hope this helps you if your lucky enough to be fishing at Crowley.
fishing thoughts 