I'm fishing a lake this weekend that has a bunch of old road beds and sunken bridges. Most of these roads and bridges are in 10-20' of water. Being that they're not that deep, I'm guessing that it leaves cranking them as an option. Obviously I have quite a few other spots on the lake that I want to hit, but if the bite is tough, these submerged bridges could be the ticket to a check. I've never really fished submerged bridges before, so I'm curious how some of you guys would approach these? Fish should be post spawn and the water should be around ~70*.

 

I'm a big fan of cranking, but if I'm going to get hung up and spook everything down there, then I would probably be best to jig or dropshot (I'm guessing). Whats your take on this?

_{what lake?}

_{Only ask to find out age of bridges submerged and what the prey is.  Have you graphed the bridges and found shad?} 

The lake was impounded in 1934. 

 

Forage: Crappie/Perch/Bluegill, alewife, shiners, suckers

Ive only fished one sunken bridge but caught a lot of fish on it until it become a community hole .I marked it with buoys and used texas rig worms . It was about fifteen foot deep at normal pool .One of those places that a limit could be pulled off of in 6 cast .

 

 

 

 

You can fish anything that reaches bottom. Carolina rig, deep cranks, maybe a heavy spinnerbait, but I think a football jig would work good.

You can try cranking a bridge structure, 20' is about the limit most deep divers can get down to casting them.

Lipless sinking crankbaits can be jigged vertically, works!

Jigs and T-rigs are your best lures for this type of structure, dragging your line up and over concrete isn't a good practice. Drop shot is good!

Some big catfish live under bridges!

If you have palegic baitfish like alewife and crappie, they hang around that type of structure. Don't forget about crawdads, they live around concrete structure.

Road beds have good edges, undercuts, culverts, rocks, brush and look for trees near bridges over creek beds.

Structure spoons can be very effective on road beds and bridges.

Good luck.

Tom

PS, great screen shots Wayne.

Big flutter spoon might work well.

On one of the lakes I fish, there is only one submerged bridge and the creek bottom there is 22ft.  It gets a lot of pressure with jigs and C-rigs, so I fish it with a Norman Thin N on a 1/2oz. Booyah Boo Rig.  The fish rarely if ever, see a small crank that deep and I've left that old bridge with five or six nice keepers brought to my net on more than one occasion. 

I used to fish a crappie sized crank on a C-rig there, but with all the chunk rock , I'd get hung up on every third cast or so.  The Boo Rig lets you keep the nose of the rig up out of harm's way and I've even run a Bomber Model A on a 2ft. leader behind one.

Thanks for the tips guys. Headed to the lake now. I'll report back Monday.

I would use SI to see how they are positioned on it and go from there, but if i didnt have SI i would throw cranks over the top and then use a jig to probe around and in it, our bridges were all broke apart and the left the rubble there when they impounded the lakes...