Everything you need to know about
fishing on Lake Wedowee by Matt Shelley
Like most lakes in the state of Alabama, Lake Wedowee has a plethora of leisure activities to offer. But on Lake Wedowee, few pastimes are enjoyed as much as fishing. Lake Wedowee is stocked with a variety of fish including bluegill, channel catfish, crappie, striped bass and largemouth bass. For most anglers in the Wedowee area though, the crappie and bass fishing is some of the best in the state and in the south. Don East, a retired Navy man and Wedowee angler, is the area’s premiere expert on crappie fishing. East has been active in helping Alabama Power Company in determining when crappie begin to spawn on Lake Wedowee so the lake levels aren’t elevated too quickly, which destroys the eggs in shallow waters. “You have to understand crappie and how they spawn,” East said. “If they go into the spawn and lay their eggs and the water rises seven or eight feet over the next few days it messes up the spawn.” The eggs don’t receive enough sunlight to mature and hatch if the lake levels are raised in a short amount of time, which decreases the overall number of crappie in the lake. East alerts the Alabama Power Company when he detects the beginning of the spawn and the company tries to withhold raising the lake level for 10 days. But why so much attention to the spawning season? Not only does it affect the crappie population in the lake, but it decreases the crappie harvest during the peak time, which of course is during the spawn. East said the lake could be divided into two areas when deter48
mining the spawn period-the little river area and the big river area. The big river area is basically everything north of the Highway 48 Bridge. The land formations around this area consist mostly of hills and small mountains, giving the water less direct sunlight on any given day. This means the water temperature stays cooler longer. The little river area is surrounded by lower-lying land, so the water temperature rises quicker than the big river area. East said crappie spawn two or three weeks earlier in the little river because of the quicker rise in water temperature in the area. And while there is never an absolute time period for the spawn because of fluctuations in average temperature in a year, it’s somewhat easy to figure out when crappie will spawn. The peak spawning time in an average year is usually between March 25 and April 15. But the real determining factor is the exact water temperature. When the temperature of the water hits about 58 degrees, look for crappie to begin the spawn. “Before crappie spawn, they tend to school up at the mouths of creeks and in deep water,” East said. “If there’s any timber out there, that’s a good place to find them, at the mouths of creeks. They stay out there and mill around until the water temperature hits 58, then they move into the shallows and spawn.” East said determining the best time of year to fish for crappie can be as easy as determining the spawn period. But East continued to say that not all crappie spawn at the exact same time. It all depends on the location in the lake and