Walker Lake in Kirkwood

[gramps50]

11 hours ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

I keep them in my phone now.  

What app you using?

[snagged in outlet 3]

7 hours ago, gramps50 said:

What app you using?

I just keep them in notes.  

[WestCentralFisher]

I have no idea about the lake in question, but for determining if a small lake or stream has fish (or at least fishable populations of anything) nothing can compare to a half a nightcrawler on a size 6 hook. 

I am not saying that is the best or most exciting way to fish generally, once I've determined a body of water is worth my time, but I can say that if that doesn't work at all after multiple hours of fishing (as in, no bites/lost fish/etc) it might have some fish in it, but it probably isn't worth more of my time. 

Usual caveats of fishing during reasonable times of the day and season apply. This method (probably) won't work as intended in January, and may not at 2:20 PM on a blazing hot summer day (i.e. right now.)

And occasionally it fails on water that turns out to be fishy in good conditions. But that's really, really rare. 

[Lloyd]

In my experience it's not easy to consistently catch bass in the summer in most St. Louis area ponds. The prespawn period (March - April) is about 10x better both for size and numbers. In the summer there are days when the fish are biting like crazy, but they are few and far between. I think a lot of the ponds have healthy populations of bass, but all the fishing pressure has a very negative impact on catch rates.

[Gavin]

Walker is just a small shallow old pond. I’m sure they need to rehab it or fish will die when it gets really hot or cold. 

 

[JUNGLE JIM 1]

It's a shame because there were some nice bass in there before the fish kill. After that they did a fish survey and there was no fish over 10" collected. Lake was full of huge tadpoles so plenty of frogs this year but majority of bass were killed.

[Lloyd]

5 hours ago, JUNGLE JIM 1 said:

It's a shame because there were some nice bass in there before the fish kill. After that they did a fish survey and there was no fish over 10" collected. Lake was full of huge tadpoles so plenty of frogs this year but majority of bass were killed.

Dang, what a huge bummer. On the flip side, I'm impressed that anyone (I assume it was MDC?) was collecting data on a pond as small as Walker.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Didn’t they used put trout in there?

[Lloyd]

On 6/26/2025 at 12:08 PM, snagged in outlet 3 said:

Didn’t they used put trout in there?

They definitely stocked it last winter. I caught a few.

[gramps50]

On 6/23/2025 at 2:32 PM, WestCentralFisher said:

I have no idea about the lake in question, but for determining if a small lake or stream has fish (or at least fishable populations of anything) nothing can compare to a half a nightcrawler on a size 6 hook. 

I am not saying that is the best or most exciting way to fish generally, once I've determined a body of water is worth my time, but I can say that if that doesn't work at all after multiple hours of fishing (as in, no bites/lost fish/etc) it might have some fish in it, but it probably isn't worth more of my time. 

Usual caveats of fishing during reasonable times of the day and season apply. This method (probably) won't work as intended in January, and may not at 2:20 PM on a blazing hot summer day (i.e. right now.)

And occasionally it fails on water that turns out to be fishy in good conditions. But that's really, really rare. 

Are you tossing the night crawler on the bottom or suspending off the bottom with a bobber. Guessing drop shot might work too.