“Crappie season” is not over just because crappie have completed the spawn. Here’s some tips on what your next move should be.
After the annual spawn for crappie comes to an end, crappie in lakes and reservoirs across the Magnolia State begin moving from their spring locations to locations where they will spend the summer. In some lakes this might be on and around nearby brush piles, some fish jump on the closest creek channel and start looking for baitfish to feed on, while others might suspend out in the main lake body in relation to the thermocline.
In any of these scenarios, crappie are still available for the catching. It just takes a shift from the beating the bank mentality to looking around and finding where these fish are headed to next.
Just keep fishing
Calhoun City crappie guide John Harrison of JH Guide Service said his experience after the spawn is that crappie won’t always completely vacate their spawning sites when the spawn is over.
“Even in mid-June, we’ll still have some late spawners and a lot of males guarding the nests for another couple weeks,” said Harrison (662-983-5999). “These fish spawned in 5 – 10 feet of water and they’ll stay in those areas till the water gets too hot for them.”
One of the biggest differences Harrison sees is the way the fish bite, transitioning from an aggressive defensive bite to a feeding bite.
“That’s a big deal because some days you’ll get that hard bite from guarding males and then other days or locations, it will be spawned out females feeding and it’s two distinctive bites,” he said.
Not too long ago, Harrison would have been blindly running a jig pole around the visible and submerged wood after the spawn, trying to put a minnow or jig in front of crappie.
“Technology has changed that,” he said. “The patterns change daily, sometimes even hourly and the LiveScope lets me see that. I can tell if some fish are still on the beds, if they’ve moved out into brush piles or if they’ve headed out to the main lake.”
Harrison said one of his best tips when fishing with real time sonar is to change baits frequently, showing the fish different profiles, presentations, and even colors until you find what they want.
“Post spawn can be sporadic, especially early,” he said. “Some days they want the bait at a dead stick, other days you have to zip it past them and then others they want it suspended or slowly moving above their head.
“Our big crappie lakes are pretty muddy, so any color combinations with chartreuse, pink, or orange in them work well. I think changing profiles is just as important if you’re not getting bites.”
The guide said he will switch from a 3-inch solid body jig to a 1/8-ounce head and a slimmer body when the fish get too picky. Other options are hair jigs with a shimmering affect or baits with action tails.
“You just got to sort it all out,” he said. “Technology is making it easier, but you have to find out what they want in order to get them to bite.”
Pulling crankbaits
Mississippi tournament angler Kent Driscoll said pinpointing how crappie relate to the thermocline is half the battle once the post-spawn season hits. One of his go-to tactics is trolling crankbaits.
Driscoll credits several summer time factors with making his trolling setup successful. The first is that as the water temperatures heat up, many reservoirs will stratify and a thermocline will set up somewhere in the 12 to 20 foot zone. Not only do crappie suspend out in the main lake just above the thermocline to find comfortable positions, they also find food there.
“Finding the baitfish is important to catching fish,” Driscoll said. “Bait can’t live below the thermocline so they end up forming tight schools out in the main lake and at the mouths of major creeks. They suspend around 12 to 15 feet deep out over 20 to 25 feet of water. If I’m marking bait on my graph, that’s where I know I’ll find crappie.”
Trolling crankbaits for crappie requires some commitment on the angler’s part. While you might be able to throw a crankbait out behind the boat and hold the rod in hand until you get a bite, setting your boat up ahead of time with the right rod holders, rods, reels, and line are some of the necessities to insure success.
“Crankbait trolling for crappie is a very technical system,” Driscoll said, “but once you’re set up you can really catch a lot of fish and a lot of big fish through the summer time months when most people think it’s too hot to fish. With crankbait trolling, the hotter it gets, the better the fishing gets.”
Driscoll said that companies like Bandit, Rapala, Arkie, and Pico, as well as a host of others were converting old bass fishing favorites to use for crappie or developing new models just for crappie trolling.
The depth of presentation of the crankbaits is a coordination of variables including the amount of line out, working depth of the crankbait, and boat speed. Driscoll ranges his boat speed on average between 1.5 mph and 2.0 mph. Such precise graduations in speed require the use of a GPS-enabled electronics system that will measure speed to the tenth of a mph.
“The best way to learn daily and weekly patterns when crankbaiting is just get out there and go,” said Driscoll. “Pay attention to the depth and how deep the fish are when you catch one and keep trying to imitate that. It’s a lot of trial and error but that helps you hone in on what they want.”
Chase ’em down
Sling Em In Guide TJ Shands explains how he uses LiveScope and forward-facing sonar to target post-spawn crappie and get them into the boat. Shands, who primarily fishes Grenada Lake, breaks the mold when it comes to crappie fishing because he rarely, if ever, targets structure when he’s fishing for crappie.
“I really don’t care for fishing structure,” Shands said (573-233-6885). “I’m not a structure fisherman at all, so just about every crappie I catch, I find out in open water. These are the same fish that anglers are tightlining for, the same fish that people want to catch longlining, and definitely the same fish on the same pattern as guys pulling crankbaits.”
In order to target open water fish, Shands will key on pre-spawn crappie from the beginning of the year right through the late pre-spawn. He said when crappie go into heavy cover and get into water depths of less than 6 feet, he backs off and works on the female crappie that are staging and/or the later waves of pre-spawners and the early waves of post-spawning crappie.
“My ideal scenario is searching open water flats that have depths of 10 to 15 feet of water,” said Shands. “I usually find crappie suspended 3 to 5 feet deep somewhere on those flats.”
Shands further breaks the crappie fishing mold by saying he doesn’t really want to see a lot of baitfish when he’s fishing. In fact, he said too much baitfish in the water blocks his view when he is in search mode with his sonar unit set to 50 feet and he’s cruising around at 1 to 1.5 mph on the trolling motor looking for crappie to target.
“Some bait is OK, the smaller the pods the better,” he said. “Those big waves of baitfish hide the crappie and if the bait is not scattered and broken up, it usually means the crappie are not in a feeding mood anyway.”
Long line trolling
Cleveland, Miss. crappie guide Torch Tindle, who operates Torch’s Guide Service, said he loves to long line before and during the crappie spawn, but the tactic really shines after the party is over and the guests start to leave.
“The fish scatter right after the spawn,” said Tindle (662-515-0175). “That’s why so many anglers have a hard time catching them. Some move off to brush piles, some move off to boat docks, but they all move and that’s what you want when you’re long lining.”
Tindle said he would rather have some stain in the water when long lining than trying to troll in gin clear water. Water clarity will often be dictated by rainfall, which has not been a problem across most of the country this year.
Tindle’s best advice is to keep an eye on your sonar screen when long line trolling and pay attention to what the graph is telling you.
“Fish might be high in the water column or they might be hugging the bottom,” he said. “They might be mixed in with baitfish or following behind them. Find the right depth and adjust your speed and pull what you’ve got through there.”
As far as baits, colors and styles, Tindle said it’s all jigs with plastic trailers but one of the big keys is using jig heads with big enough hooks. To remedy this, he spends a good many days during the off season pouring his own jigheads with combinations of 1/16 and 1/8 heads on 2/0 and 3/0 hooks.
“This time of year they’ll hit big curly tails jigs and I especially like jig heads that have spinner blades attached on the underside of the head,” he said. “They’ll just maul it as it’s coming by so you gotta have a big enough hook to take hold so you can get that fish in the boat.”
John Harrison of JH Guide Service can be reached at 662-983-5999. TJ Shands of Sling Em In Guide Service can be reached at 573-233-6885. Torch Tindle of Torch’s Guide Service can be reached at 662-515-0175.
Be the first to comment