Don’t make the mistake of thinking that crappie fishing is over, just because the spawn is past. Keep catching slabs using these tactics.
If you’re a deer hunter in Mississippi, you spend much of the year yearning for the time when the whitetail mating rituals significantly increase the chances of bringing the hunter and the hunted together.
The annual crappie spawn, what many anglers have even labelled “crappie season” isn’t that much different from the deer rut, and when it’s over, many hunters leave the woods until the next year, thinking their chances are finished. Don’t be that guy when it comes to crappie fishing. It’s true, a crappie may not be hiding behind every bush and stump at water’s edge, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t catch them.
Understanding how crappie relate to the time after the spawn and using the right tactics to target them will put you right back on the fish and make you forget that “crappie season” is supposed to be over.
Jig standing timber
Crappie pro Ronnie Capps from Dyersburg, Tenn., said many anglers make the mistake of giving up when they are no longer catching male crappie sporting spawning colors or egg-laden females. Just because the crappie in your lake may not be actively spawning, Capps said that doesn’t mean they have left the area, and fish may be in water only a couple of feet deeper than they were the previous few weeks.
Capps said postspawn crappie are instinctively drawn to live, standing timber as water temperatures increase through the spring after the spawn.
“Just because these fish are no longer actively spawning doesn’t mean they’re not going to be in almost the exact same areas,” Capps said. “We’re catching some good fish now on lakes across Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama in 3 or 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 timber from now until the fish move out to more open water. In many shallow lakes like Arkabutla, Capps said this takes a while, and he may still be catching fish around trees until late summer. One key is to target trees or brush on the edge of a creek channel, ditch or some other depression that gives crappie access to deeper water. That same access also tends to draw baitfish moving in and out.
Capps suggests using an 8- to 9-foot jig pole that can reach into an area around standing timber but still has enough backbone to pull a fish out of the brush. For this application, he also wants a “do-nothing jig” that all he has to do is present correctly.
“I like a 1/16-ounce ProBuilt jig with a rubber tube skirt, something that you can just stick down there and hold still as it shimmies in front of the fish,” Capps said.
Another factor that plays hand-in-hand with shallow-water fishing any time of year is the water level. Capps reminds anglers that fish will often move up to find new water on rising levels and will retreat back to deeper cuts and channels as the water recedes.
Find late spawners
John Harrison of Calhoun City, who guides on Grenada Lake, said anglers who pattern fish in one area may make the mistake of thinking the spawn is over when those fish move on.
“Everybody has heard, ‘They don’t all spawn at once,’ but nobody seems to believe that,” Harrison said. “Just because the fish move out of your favorite area or those one or two places you’ve found them, doesn’t mean they’ve all completed spawning.”
Harrison said he can find fish still in the throes of spawning as late as mid-June, most years, on most of his north Mississippi lakes. One of the keys is to look for spawning locations that are not obvious.
“Everybody wants to run up the creeks and get in the shallow flats to catch fish, but I don’t think all those fish move to the back of the lake to spawn,” he said. “I’ve found males guarding nests down the lake sitting on humps in 8 to 10 feet of water. I think those fish were just waiting on the right conditions for the area of the lake they live in.”
Fish boat docks
Guide Brad Whitehead from Muscle Shoals, Ala., said he’s found that, all over the South, a lot of crappie will spawn around boat docks, but even after the spawn has ended, many of those fish, and others, will gravitate to boat docks.
“You can fish the pilings with a jig pole and catch some fish, but the best way to catch a lot of fish is by shooting jigs back up under the dock,” he said.
Whitehead said not just any rod will do the job when it comes to shooting tiny jigs well back under a boat dock. His choice is a B’’n’M Sharpshooter 6.
“Light line and a slow-falling jig are the two key ingredients, but what good are they if you can’t get the jig back there where most of the crappie are,” Whitehead said. “That’s what this rod does; it slings even the tiniest jigs up under the cover, and then it’s just a matter of getting that good, slow fall and watching that line for even the slightest twitch.”
Before heading out to shoot docks, Whitehead said anglers need to understand that not all docks are created equal.
Docks come in two basic styles: floating or pier docks. The big difference is a floating dock has little or no support structure attached to the bottom. A pier dock has vertical, and more often than not, supplemental diagonal and horizontal supports for stability. The two styles of docks fish differently.
“I really like a floating dock because there’s nothing under it to get hung up on,” Whitehead said. “If the fish are under there, and you feel any kind of catch or tension on your line after you shoot the jig, you’ll know pretty well it’s a fish. Pier docks are a little more aggravating because cross bars and vertical supports will snag your jig. The floating docks are a little easier to shoot just because they can be a little bit higher off the water sometimes.”
Whitehead also recommended targeting boat docks sitting in or over at least 10 feet of water.
“A good dock with access to deep water will hold crappie all summer long,” he said.
The flip side
While fishing a crappie tournament several years ago, veteran angler Whitey Outlaw was asked about the way he hooked a minnow onto a jig.
Outlaw, who has a proven track record, shared a secret for attracting attention to his bait when jig fishing around cover that is already loaded with natural bait. Outlaw uses a 1/16-ounce jig and piggybacks a live minnow on the end of the jig — a common practice among many crappie anglers. The difference is that Outlaw impales his bait upside down, inserting the hook through the minnow’s nostril and coming out behind the lower jaw. The result is a very disoriented bait that wriggles to right itself as soon as it’s back in the water.
Outlaw said that a minnow hooked in this fashion never “settles down” as many will do when hooked and left for a time in the water.
“Well, I don’t really know when I started fishing minnows this way. I probably did it by accident the first time” Outlaw said. “All I know is that it worked, and I‘ve been doin’ it ever since.
Outlaw said his trick works in deep, clear lakes across Mississippi like Pickwick and Bay Springs, as well as more stained, shallower waters like Grenada and Arkabutla.
“I don’t troll ‘em upside down” Outlaw said. “That’ll kill them in a hurry, but for enticing a big slab that’s hanging down in structure, that upside-down minnow looks like it’s injured, and he’s usually the first that big crappie will pick off.”
What does that jig weigh?
Crappie anglers are familiar with using jigs that weigh considerably less than typical ones fished for bass and other species. Popular jig weights for crappie include 1/32-, 1/16- and 1/8-ounce, but those listed weights can vary considerably from one manufacturer to another, sometimes even one jig to another.
“I’ve seen jigs marked 1/16-ounce that weighed anywhere from 1.5 grams to 2.1 grams,” said crappie pro Kent Driscoll. “That’s why I also ways carry a gram-scale with me and measure each jig individually before I put (it) in the rotation.”
Driscoll said what may seem to be a negligible difference in weight can make a lot of difference in how that jig swims, whether it’s pulled behind the boat, shot up under a dock, or presented vertically on a jig pole. Add to that the weight and buoyancy of the jig body, and most anglers have no real clue what their jig is doing under the water.
“The best water for crappie fishing in general is going to be stained, which means reduced visibility,” Driscoll said. “A crappie may only be able to see the bait at a distance of about 2 feet. Another factor is that a crappie always feeds in an upward position and will ignore a bait that passes just 6 inches under its nose.”
Using a gram scale, which can be found at most hardware stores that sell precision tools and equipment for around $15, instead of having only three or four jig-weight choices, he can broaden that range to around a dozen. The subtle weight difference allows Driscoll to hone his swimming depths to get around a foot of depth tolerance, which can and has made a huge difference in the number of bites he gets.
