Jim and Barbara Reedy fish all over the country on the Crappie Masters tournament trail, where they encounter many different scenarios in which to find fish.
After years of competing, they’ve developed an answer —brush piles.
When the couple is competing during the winter prior to the spring spawn, one of the first things they do during their pre-tournament scouting is locate a number of brush piles in deep and intermediate water.
“We don’t try to fish anything over 20 feet deep,” said Reedy. “We seldom catch crappie much deeper than that anywhere any time of year. Once you’ve located this type of structure, look for crappie to suspend over the top of it if there’s been stable weather and you’re fishing on a sunny day. If the weather is bad, a sudden weather change or front that moves through, they’ll be dug down in the brush.”
The Reedy team prefers to tight line troll over brush piles and relies on jig poles in 12-feet lengths. They outfit the rods with 6-pound hi-vis monofilament line and use a double hook minnow rig to present either live or a combination of live and artificial baits.
“We go with at least a half-ounce sinker on the rig because we’re fishing right in the brush and having that weight in the middle of the rig will help shake the hook loose when hung up,” said Barbara Reedy.
After years of putting out their own brush piles, the Reedys now rely on state of the art technology to locate both their own piles as well as those put out by other anglers or fisheries management staff. They look on long deep points that jut out toward deep water and along channels and ditches that lead from deep water back to good spawning cover.
Slow spider rigging, with either live minnows for bait or jigs tipped with minnows, is extremely effective from early winter to early spring before crappie move shallow to spawn. Depths between 15 to 20 feet are the ideal range as crappie stage up on underwater structure.
Reedy explained that generally speaking, black crappie are found holding tight to brush piles and stake beds sunk in many lakes for cover. White crappie relate to deep water brush piles while suspending up in the water column over deep water, and may hold just below schools of baitfish. Many anglers don’t target specific schools of crappie, they just concentrate on finding brush piles with baitfish in the vicinity, knowing the crappie will follow.
“The great thing about this type of trolling and the way we use it is it’s not just a deep-water tactic,” said Reedy. “All you have to do is lighten up on the weights a little and roll your line in a little and fish right into shallow water. Crappie will rarely turn up their noses at a good brush pile so long as it’s in the right depth and along a route they’re using.”
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