Veteran guide John Harrison looks forward to fishing Grenada during the spring spawn more than any other time of the year. The spawn is a time when he can catch fish on their own turf, going hand-to-hand with the monster crappie that are home to the lake.
“Crappie start to spawn when the water temperature gets to be about 57, 58 degrees,” said Harrison. “However, I’m talking about surface temperatures in the very backs of the creeks and sloughs where the water is less than 3 feet deep. These areas warm quicker than the rest of the lake. Some years that may be as early as the last week of February, and one year I remember in particular, crappie were still sporting spawning colors down near the dam in mid-June.”
Harrison admits there is a knack for picking the spawning beds that big crappie prefer, even when he’s standing waist deep in a forest of tangled cover. He favors horizontal cover over vertical cover, which may be hard to see in the muddy water. He surmises that crappie feel safer and their brood better protected when they can get down under some overhead cover that provides some reasonable protection to their backs. It’s for this reason that he targets root balls found at the bases of trees and large bushes.
“Why would a crappie swim past this,” he said, pointing to an exposed tree on a nearby island. “This is perfect spawning cover. The waves have washed at least 2 feet out from under the root ball and the live tree is covered in grass.”
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