Over Memorial Day weekend, I had the chance to venture out to Southeast Kansas and fish a lake I’d never been on before called Big Hill Reservoir. The lake is roughly 1,200 acres and comprised of mostly standing timber. However, the south side of the lake has a large recreational area for pleasure boaters.
White bass and crappie are abundant. The lake has no quantity or length limits on white bass. It also has a limit of 50 crappie, but no length limit. There is a good population of largemouth and some smallmouth bass as well.
I planned to target smallmouth along the dam, but switched to white bass and crappie pretty quickly. We caught them with shad imitation crankbaits and swimbaits. The best bite turned out to be trolling. I tied on a small flicker shad and crappie buster crankbait and we hammered whites and crappie on channel swings along points in the south part of the lake.
Water conditions were fair. Clarity was no more than 1.5 feet and water temperature was in the upper 60s most of the day, but did reach 70-71 mid afternoon.
Below is a video I recorded on some GoPros of the trip and there’s some drone shots as well to get an aerial view of the lake. Give it a watch to learn more about our trip to Big Hill Reservoir and see the lake for yourself!
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Check out another insane catch we had in a nearby Southeast Kansas Reservoir, Elk City Lake!