Fill your bucket list at the home of the 3-pound crappie
Ask any group of crappie enthusiasts to name just one bucket-list lake where they could possibly catch a monster crappie, most would say, “Grenada Lake in the spring.”
“The nickname for Grenada Lake is ‘the home of the 3-pound crappie,’” remarked Jarad Roper, a professional crappie angler with his father, Tommie. “It does produce bigger than average fish every year. Anytime someone drops a bait into Grenada Lake, that person could possibly catch the biggest crappie of a lifetime.”
About three miles northeast of the town of Grenada, the largest lake entirely within Mississippi spreads across 35,000 acres at pool stage. Beginning in August each year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begins to draw down the flood-control reservoir. By December, the water level could drop more than 22 feet. The lake begins to refill in mid-January, depending upon the amount of rain at the time. It normally reaches full pool by early May.
“We’ve compiled data from various sources comparing Grenada Lake to other lakes and it was again No, 1 for big crappie in Mississippi in 2021,” reported Keith Meals, a Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks biologist in Oxford. “It produces many 2- to 2.5-pound fish with the biggest crappie in many tournaments often coming in around 3.5 pounds or better. A 3.83-pound crappie was weighed in a tournament in the spring of 2021. In 2020, we saw two fish that were both at 3.87 pounds.”
In some professional crappie tournaments on Grenada Lake, anglers might bring in 30 to 40 3-pounders each day. In one tournament, the winners landed seven fish weighing more than 27 pounds for nearly a 4-pound average.
“In 2021, I caught 18 crappie weighing more than three pounds and put every one of them back after weighing them,” recalled John Harrison with JH Guide Service (662-983-5999, Facebook) in Calhoun City. “The biggest weighed 3.29 pounds. The biggest I’ve ever caught and put on a scale weighed 3.59 pounds. I’ve heard of people catching some 4-pounders.”
Impounded on the Yalobusha River, the reservoir dates to 1954. The Skuna River flows into the northern end of the reservoir, creating the second main arm. Some holes in the old river channels drop to more than 30 feet deep at full pool, but much of the lake remains shallow and stumpy. Both arms can produce good fish. Although anglers can catch big crappie all year long at Grenada Lake, the best fishing for giants occurs in the spring when big females swollen with roe move up shallow to spawn in the coves off major creeks.
“Normally our historic peak time to catch big crappie on Grenada Lake is the last week of March,” Meals said. “Of course, that always depends upon temperature, water levels, the moon and other factors. The peak of the crappie spawn on Grenada historically occurs in the first or second week of April. Warming temperatures, rising water levels and a full moon would be ideal for spawning.”
A little larger than the Skuna, the Yalobusha side typically runs a little more stained to muddy. The Skuna side generally holds clearer water. Since the Skuna River runs a little clearer, many anglers fish this arm first during the spawning season. Look for little ditches or creek channels that lead into shallow sunny backwater areas that might warm quicker.
“Water warms up faster on the Skuna arm than it does on the Yalobusha arm,” Harrison said. “Crappie usually start spawning on the Skuna River side about a week to 10 days before they start on the Yalobusha River side. The Skuna has more sand in it so it clears up faster.
“Once the water temperature starts getting in the high 50s or around 60 to 62 degrees, the males start hitting the banks. We’ll catch males in knee-deep water. I start fishing the Skuna in early March and fish around to the Yalobusha side.”
Males move shallow first to look for spawning places. Crappie spawn around stumps, standing timber or other cover close to a cleared spot with a sand or gravel bottom. Males don’t make beds like bass or bream. Instead, they collectively clear out a place near cover to wait for the females, which tend to hang in slightly deeper water. Abundant standing timber and stumps dot the lake, providing good spawning cover.
For the past few years, high water levels during the spring flooded the woods surrounding the lake. High water in cover usually produces excellent spawning success, meaning more and bigger fish two or three years down the road. When water inundates the timber, crappie move in to spawn where people couldn’t reach them in boats. Therefore, many anglers wade through the shallows.
“We do a lot of wade fishing around the flooded trees in the spring once the lake fills with water,” Harrison said. “I like to target flooded pines, pin oaks and slick birch trees. I also like cypress trees with muscadine vines hanging on them. Those trees usually hold fish around them. Most of the trees are still green, alive and growing, because the water doesn’t stay high very long, but some of them die.”
To catch fish in shallow flooded timber, use long poles to strategically place minnows or soft-plastic jigs as close to wood as possible. With a short line attached to a single long pole, quietly approach the trees and jig around the trunks, stumps, cypress knees or flooded bush. Whenever possible, fish completely around every object.
“For wading, I use an 11-foot B’n’M ultralight pole with about 2.5 feet of 10-pound-test Gamma line because those old males are sometimes pretty hard to get out of the cover,” Harrison said. “Those fish won’t be very deep. The surface of the water will be the warmest, so that’s where fish will be. I use a variety of jigs and colors. Most of the time, my go-to bait would be an 1/8-ounce orange and chartreuse jig. It’s a little heavier and I can feel it better. It makes a bit bigger presentation.”
Drop a jig next to a woody object and let it fall naturally. Don’t add much extra movement. If present, a crappie should snatch it quickly as the jig sinks. If it hits bottom and nothing happens, drop it in another spot, perhaps only a few inches away.
“I don’t jig it up and down a lot,” Harrison said. “I just move it in a slow motion around that tree and give it a little twitch occasionally. One time on Sardis Lake, I caught 19 crappie off one cypress tree and never moved.”
Not everyone wants to leave a perfectly good boat to wade in a swamp, or can physically do it. People can still catch big crappie and stay dry. Use the same single-pole technique, but around trees growing in slightly deeper water.
“In the first part of April, I look for the big females in about three to five feet of water,” Harrison said. “When the water is too low to wade fish, we’ll fish the creek edges or troll along the ledge edges. For trolling, I use single ¼-ounce jigs tipped with minnows on 16-foot trolling rods. When fishing deeper water, we also do spider rigging. That’s a good way to catch fish in April.”
By trolling or spider rigging, anglers can deploy multiple baits to fish different depths simultaneously. They can also experiment with various lure sizes, configurations and colors to pattern fish.
“Around the first of May, most fish will still be in shallow water,” Harrison explained. “On May 3, 2021, I caught a crappie that weighed a little over three pounds in 2.5 feet of water. If it starts getting hot, they’ll move away from the banks and start schooling. They might be in 16 to 18 feet of water, but suspended seven to eight feet deep. That’s when we troll for them with live minnows. Sometimes, we use jigs.
“People miss out if they don’t fish the summer and fall. We catch a lot of fish from June through November. The fall fishing on Grenada Lake is phenomenal.”
Many people also fish the spillway below the dam. Some people without boats catch big fish there. People could fish the riprap at the spillway or a fishing pier on the south side near where the spillway channel and the old river merge.
“I’ve seen some big fish come out of the spillway, which means they were probably pulled out of the lake,” Meals acknowledged. “Not everybody has a boat, and the spillway is one of the places where bank anglers can catch good fish, but it’s not a place for the mobility challenged.”
Any day of the year and any drop of a bait could produce the crappie of a lifetime on Grenada Lake. Sportsmen from neighboring states and all over the country regularly visit “the home of the 3-pound crappie,” but Mississippi anglers don’t need to travel far to land a bucket-list fish.
Be the first to comment