Summer crappie in submerged timber

When the mercury soars, head for the nearest (and sometimes deepest) wood in the lake to find slab crappie.

Crappie are a fish for all seasons and outstanding crappie fishing can be found in numerous locations across the state of Mississippi year-round. Most of the reluctance to fish for crappie comes when conditions are not comfortable for the angler. 

It’s no secret that July weather makes it tough to fish, but below the surface of the water, crappie are adapting and finding suitable refuge from the heat. Many times, this form of refuge comes in the form of underwater structure such as submerged timber.

While other factors such as prevailing thermoclines, water depths, current flows and water levels also dictate where crappie can be found, submerged timber is factored into nearly every equation.

When crappie gather around submerged timber, several tactics and strategies rise to the top as some of the best ways to find and catch them. Let’s take a look at a few of these strategies. 

Spot-Locking

Pickwick Lake guide Joel Harris prefers to park right on top of underwater timber when the weather gets hot. He positions the boat and presents baits straight down to the fish.

Fishing vertically in clear water necessitates some stealth in his fishing line choice. Harris’ pick is 4-pound fluorocarbon. It’s matched with a tiny 1/64-ounce jig head and body. To hold the bait deep, he crimps a #5 split shot about 18 inches above the bait.

“The boat is not moving,” said Harris. “I hold it in place over the tops of brushpiles in water that’s 30 – 45 feet deep using the Spot-Lock feature on my trolling motor. The baits are just down there hanging.”

The combination of light line, tiny baits and placement right in their living room is typically too much for crappie to pass up. It’s a pattern that Harris said will last all through the summer and even through the winter as fish take up residence on his habitat sites.

“To give you an example, for three years in a row, I’ve gone out on a guide trip on the 4th of July and put a 60 fish, 2-man limit in the boat in under 4 hours,” Harris said.

Although he has a long list of places he could visit in a typical day on the water, Harris said in the heat of summer he can usually fill a limit in as little as three locations and often no more than 10 spots.

“Once you get accustomed to seeing the bite on that rod tip, once you get the hang of what a bite looks like, fish come over the side pretty fast,” he said.

Slip corking

Crappie tournament angler Kent Driscoll explained that one of the first tactics he learned while he was dialing in the use of real time, forward-facing sonar is using a slip cork to present baits right at the fish’s level.

Driscoll pointed out that one of the primary keys of real time sonar fishing was to really dial in to the depth the fish were at as well as watch the fish as they react to your bait. He said the new technology was very effective for different styles of crappie fishing.

“I’m a big fan of slip-cork fishing with it,” said Driscoll. “I’ve spent a lot of time putting in brushpiles and locating existing structure and pitching a slip cork to the fish where I see them on the piles.”

Driscoll said his preferred rods for slip corking are a 6-foot ultralight rods for casting to fish and an 11’ jig pole rod for pitching corks. In both situations, he’s rigging with 6-pound high visibility line.

“There are some subtle differences between targeting specks or black crappie versus the white crappie,” he said. “I prefer artificial baits but I’ll use a slimmer profile, down-sized bait for speck fishing, maybe even a hair jig, and I’ll use larger, bulkier profile baits for white crappie.”

Jigging standing timber

Magnolia Crappie Club angler Hugh Krutz considers Ross Barnett Reservoir his home lake. Despite the heat and water temperatures approaching 90 degrees, Krutz still finds plenty of summer crappie.

Krutz prefers to take the single pole approach to summertime crappie angling. He’s going to locate specific areas where crappie hide from the heat and give them an offer they can’t refuse.

“In 20 plus foot of water, a thermocline’s going to set up,” said Krutz. “That’s where the oxygen level’s going to be at its prime in the lake and all the fish are going to move, not just crappies, just about any fish, is going to stay in that range just because that’s where the most comfortable water is, temperature-wise and oxygen-wise.”

While some crappie may suspend in open water away from structure, Krutz said the next important factor is locating shade out in the open water. That’s why he heads for the trees. On Barnett, many of these trees are visible above the water line but almost every lake has some submerged standing timber that will also hold fish.

“The next thing that crappie are looking for is shade, which is used two ways,” he said. “A, like us, fish don’t want the sun in their eyes all the time and B, shade works as camouflage to ambush bait fish. But the fish that are suspended in the thermocline, in that standing timber, aren’t going to act like the fish that are suspended out in the middle of the lake. Suspended open water crappie will chase bait a little bit. The tree-huggers are going to hide under vertical limbs and wait for the bait to come to them.” 

Having found the things they need for creature comfort, catching fish in the standing timber is a matter of determining what the fish are eating and matching the hatch.

“Crappie feed on two main things in the summertime,” said Krutz. “Naturally, any baitfish that come by the tree but, also, early in the morning, on many lakes in the South, you’re going to have a mayfly hatch and all summer long, you’re going to have a mosquito hatch that’s going to happen in the morning. 

Fish shallow timber 

On many Mississippi reservoirs, summertime fishing doesn’t always mean fishing deep water. Crappie pro Ronnie Capps said he finds that some crappie never stray too far from the shallows, even months after spawning season is over.

 “Just because these fish are no longer actively spawning doesn’t mean they’re not going to be in almost the exact same areas,” said Capps. “I’ve caught some good fish in June and July in 3 – 4 feet of water. The same areas we’d be wading in but just out a little bit deeper.” 

Capps suggests using a single pole to jig standing live timber from now until the fish move out to more open water. The veteran angler said this takes a while and he may still be catching fish around trees till late summer. One key to look for when fishing standing live timber is to target trees or brush that is located on the edge of a creek, ditch or some other depression that gives crappie access to deeper water. That same access also tends to accumulate baitfish moving in and out.

“I like a 1/16-ounce jig with a rubber tube skirt, something that you can just stick down there and it shimmies in front of the fish,” said Capps.

Another factor that plays hand-in-hand with shallow water fishing any time of year is water levels. Capps reminded anglers that fish will often move up to find new water on rising water levels and will retreat back to deeper water cuts and channels as water levels recede.

Adjust your depth

Crappie guide Brad Whitehead is well known for side pulling most any time of the year and compares his single pole strategy to tight line trolling, except without rod holders. In this approach, he only uses one rod, a 10 foot jig pole. The rod is paired with a spinning reel spooled with 6 pound line and a 1/8-ounce jig head with a spongy plastic body.

Whitehead will position his right over the top of a brush pile, one of the hundreds he has planted in one of the reservoirs he guides on. Over the years, he has learned the wider he can make his tree tops, the better. He then positions himself and his clients around the boat so that the tree top is covered from all sides.

“You learn a lot about how crappie relate to tree tops when you fish this way,” said Whitehead. “Somedays they’ll be right on top. Other days they’ll be down in it and other days they’ll be way off to the side where you never expected them to be.”

When single pole jigging over brush tops, Whitehead instructs his clients to just hold the rod still, letting him impart the action to the jig by bumping the boat around the structure with his hand-controlled trolling motor. He offered that it’s nearly impossible to hold a long rod still and the slight movements of the tip compounded with wave action and current will impart a very natural presentation to the fish.