Upper Crooked Lake forms the larger, deeper half of an 1,150-acre system with Lower Crooked Lake, divided by the Parker Road causeway in Prairieville and Barry Townships.
How deep is Upper Crooked Lake?
What's the fishing like on Upper Crooked?
Where's the public access on Upper Crooked Lake?
Are Upper and Lower Crooked Lake connected?
Upper Crooked Lake is the big water of Barry County's Crooked Lake system — 735 of the pair's 1,150 acres, divided from shallow Lower Crooked by the Parker Road causeway — and it wears its popularity openly: this is Delton's home lake, ringed with residential shoreline in Prairieville and Barry Townships, twenty miles north of Kalamazoo. Reported depths vary by chart, from around 30 feet to holes pushing nearly 50; either way there's real depth here, a different animal from its twelve-foot sibling across the causeway.
It's a serious — and seriously fished — bass and pike lake. Tournaments run regularly in season, jerkbaits and ned rigs on the breaks are local currency, drop-shotting takes over as the water warms, and the bluegill run to genuine eater size. Anglers should know two things about the culture: the lake gets pressure, and it gets patrolled — the DNR and county marine division maintain a visible presence, so licenses, PFDs, and safety gear get checked here more than most places.
Access is the DNR launch on the lake (two lanes, roughly a dozen trailer spaces), with Prairieville Township's park at the north end adding beach access and a boat-wash station — worth using, as the lake has an active invasive-weed control program and asks boaters to arrive and leave clean. High-water years in the recent past reshaped some shoreline; the system's levels are tracked closely, with MSU's Kellogg Biological Station monitoring the connected waters since the 1990s.