Seasonal Crappie Fishing Tactics

Fall Crappie If there was ever a time of the year to love crappie fishing, the Fall is the time.   The lakes have started to cool, the crappie are starting to instinctively fatten up for the winter's hard times, and the fishing gets easier as the temps fall.   This is the time of the year that I think you have the best chance of catching a really big crappie.   Whether you're flipping stumps, shooting docks, fishing shallow brushpiles, shooting bridge pilings...it doesn't really matter.   You'll find crappie in all these spots and more.   This is the time of year that the novice crappie fisherman should be out gaining his confidence for the long cold months ahead.   In North Texas, the crappie will generally start their migration to shallower water about the middle of October and will generally stay there until the lake 'turns'.   During this time, I have found that it makes little difference what jigs size, color, presentation, or whatever you choose...cause the crappie are hungry and willing.   Some of my personal best days have been when the air temp was in the 40's with a light mist falling and the lake in the mid 50's.   Everybody else is in the house watching TV and sipping hot toddies...and I'm on the lake killin' em.   Honestly, nothing too technical about this season, as long as you're willing to get out in a little weather and can stand catching limits of two pounders.   Fall......hands down, my favorite.

Winter Crappie Probably the hardest season of the year to fish for crappie...unless you're an Eskimo.   After the Fall feeding splurge that most crappie in our North Texas lakes go on from about the middle of October until toward the end of November, the lakes start to change over to the winter patterns.   In most of our North Texas lakes, the lake will 'turn' about the end of October (some sooner, some later).   'Turning' means that the stratification in the lakes takes charge, and the upper layer of water gets colder (heavier) and evidentially the middle layer (lighter) and bottom layer (lightest), can't support the weight any longer, and the lakes will actually rotate top to bottom.   When this happens, the crappie will follow the heavier water (cooler water is more oxygenated) as well as the shad to deeper water.   They will stay in the deeper water until the Spring 'urge' hits them to go looking for romance.   Winter fishing is something that you have to love to do it...or are just plain ate up with the "crappieitus", in order to do, cause it's not much fun to be sitting in a boat in 30 degree weather, with a wind chill at about 10 degrees, but if you can make yourself do it, you will probably be rewarded with some very nice fish.   Remember, one of the main reasons that the crappie went deep in the first place is that the food (shad) went there, so in order to fish for them, you gotta go deep also.   Therefore the most accepted approach to fishing for them is to use minnows on a tightline rig, consisting of a barrel sinker (3/4 oz - 2 oz) on the bottom of your line, with a #2 crappie hook 8-12" about the sinker and another #2 crappie hook about 18" about the first hook.   You can replace the minnows/hooks with jigs, but minnows will most times outfish a jig in this application.   You'll need a good set of rod holders (BeeReady is my chosen favorite) and 2-6 rods (depending on how busy you wanna get all at one time) in 10-12' lengths.   Levelwind (my choice) or spinning reels will work, as they're only 'lineholders' in this application (no casting).   You'll also need good electronics (my choice is a bow mounted Humminbird 787 C2I) to find the shad/crappie, cause where you find shad, you'll find crappie.   You'll want to place your minnows at a depth similar to (or just below) the shad.   The last thing you'll need is a good trolling motor with a variable speed on it, cause you need to go into the wind dead slow.   I stress 'into the wind' cause that is the only way that you can accurately control the boat...and boat control is everything when fishing like this.   Remember, you're not casting or even holding the rods, so boat control will depend on you getting bit...period.   You'll notice that I haven't mentioned structure in this article, cause it's the only time of the year when I don't go looking for crappie holding structure.   Simply put, you don't necessarily need structure to catch crappie while deep slow trolling.   In fact, the first time you tangle 6 rods in the same brushpile at the same time, you'll find out why I avoid structure while deep trolling.   Once you get everything set up, all the baits out at the right depths, foot on the trolling motor, face in the graph, there's nothing left to do but pour a cup of coffee, follow the shad, and wait for a rod to bend.   Winter fishing.....how I love to hate it.

Spring Crappie Finally, we get to lose the snowmobile suit, the gloves, the hand warmers, and gallons of hot coffee.   In North Texas, all lakes are not created equal when it comes to the Spring warming.   Crappie will generally get the 'spring urge' when the water gets in the mid 50's.   That is, the males will start going shallow looking for areas to build nests.   The females will generally not go shallow until the week preceding the full moon in March, April or May, depending on your lake.   In fact, in some lakes they'll go shallow to spawn at these times in each of these months.   Remember this; not all fish will spawn at the same time in any lake (unless it's a power plant lake where the water is always warm), so your lake might have three or maybe four spawns before it's all over.   You'll notice that I don't mentioned too much about water temp as an indicator for the start of spawn, cause unless there are some crazy weather conditions (then all bets are off), I don't pay a lot of attention to temp; instead focusing on the time of year and the moon phase as my indicator.   While the males will go early to the nesting areas and stay later, the females will only go when they are ready and will usually leave as soon as their eggs are deposited, leaving the male to do all the work (sound familiar???)   And sometimes that can mean that the females will only be on the nests in the middle of the night, or the middle of the day, or anytime you're not expecting them to be there.   Additionally, as I mentioned crazy weather; the Spring time can and generally is, the most unreliable time of the year to fish for crappie, because today you knocked the stuffing out of them in area "X", then told all your buddies about it, went there the next day with an armada of boats in tow....and NOTHING.   Overnight a Texas blue norther blew in and shut everything down tighter than your Aunt Lizzie's girdle.   Barometric pressure comes into play this time of the year more so than any other time.   Crappie are extremely sensitive to pressure changes...and to be honest, while this is the time of year that most people want to take a guided fishing trip, it's probably the riskiest time that you can go.   But OK, I understand that you've got 'cabin fever' and just gotta go...so how's it best fished??  Obviously, the fish (if they're there) will almost always be found shallow.   My favorite way to fish in the Spring, is with jig 'n bobber.   For this rig you'll need a 'line stop' (which can be anything that you can slide with a little effort up and down your line but will stay where you put it), a small plastic bead, a sliding bobber and a 1/16 oz jig head (your choice of jig body).   You start by placing the line stop on your line, followed by the bead and then the sliding bobber.   Now tie on your jig and set your line stop to hold the jig about 6" off the bottom (you gotta know your depth in this game).   Cast the whole works out (I favor fishing parallel to the shoreline) and let it settle until all ripples have disappeared.   Now, holding your rod at about the 10 o'clock position, give it a slight 'twitch'.   Remember, all you're trying to do is just make the bobber jump a little.   Don't jerk it or move it more than a few inches, and let it settle again.   If there's a crappie in the area, he'll find you...and your bobber will just disappear.   If everything is right (weather, time of month, etc), you can go home with some very impressive strings.   If everything isn't right...well, you still got to go crappie fishing.   Spring.....you gotta love it...cause I don't.

Summer Crappie Finally summer has arrived.   No more 'blue northers', no more barometric changes, no more mild-pleasant weather.....yes sir, 100 degrees in the shade.   I know, unless you're from Texas, you think I'm nuts to anticipate the hotter weather, but with it comes some of the best crappie fishing of the year (but not "the" best...that's later).   The crappie have completed all their love making and they're hungry and looking for a place to spend the summer's hotter water temps.   After the spawn is complete, the crappie will start to migrate to the mid-depths (as dictated by your lake's depth) and look for standing timber, stump rows, brushpiles, creek channel drop-offs and the like.   Once found, they are the most predictable that they will be all year long.   If you found them 'there' today, they'll probably for sure be 'there' tomorrow.   This is the time of year that you get to rid yourself of all those 'old' jigs that have been laying in your tackle box for so long....cause the brushpiles will surely give you good reason to visit your local tackle store as soon as you get home.   My favorite way to fish the summer patterns, is to fish my jig vertically over the brushpiles, or vertically along side the standing timber.   I'll use either 1/16 oz or 1/8 oz jig heads, depending on what the crappie tell me they want.   My jig bodies will vary in size this time of the year from the 1 1/2" size to 4" size...again, dictated by what the crappie tell me.   The key to fishing in the summer is S--L--O--W.   When you think you're fishing slow enough...slow down some more.   Less movement is best, and then when you do move it, just twitch it downward, not upward (too long to explain...just trust me).   Two things that you must consider as "gotta do's"...you gotta use hi-viz line, and you gotta watch it all the time your jig is in the water.   Why, because sometimes the crappie will knock your socks off when they hit it, but most times they'll just take the jig in and unweight your line (your line will go slack).   If you can't see your line, or worse yet, if you're not watching, you'll never know that you missed catching the lake record.   And while we're talking line, don't cheat yourself.   I have known guys that hardly ever change line, saying that it cost too much, or guys that buy the cheapest line that they can find to save $.50.   Think about it this way...what is the only thing that separates you from your fish???   I've figured it out, and it costs me approximately $.35 each to put new line on my reels, and I change every third day of fishing.   But I digress.   Bottomline, summer time is the easiest time of the year to figure out where the crappie are, as well as to catch them.   Summer...I love it second best.