Springtime!

Pivot Point

Reedbeds are easy to find, the old tan and brown stalks protruding above the water like signposts, in spring. The only way to be certain crappies are in a main-lake reedbed is to move very slowly through it with an electric motor or pushpole and look for fish with your polarized sunglasses. The first groups that move in, usually sparse in number, are spooky in a normal year. Reedbeds are typically too large and too tough to fish through by making long casts when you only suspect the area is holding fish. It’s too time-consuming, with better fishing, perhaps, waiting in a nearby bay or series of canals.

Be stealthy. Don’t take the boat through large clumps of reeds, drag the hull across shallow spots, or bang around in it. Move slowly. Fish into the wind so that once you spot crappies, you don’t drift over them before getting the boat turned around. Once crappies are spotted, cast beyond them or to the windward side. Casts that land right on them make them scatter. When big numbers of fish finally enter a reedbed, they spook less easily.

The best reedbeds are like the best bays and canals: Size and complexity are positives, and wind-protected beds attract the most fish. Prevailing spring winds are north-by-northwest throughout most of the range of natural-lake crappies. Thus, the best-protected reedbeds tend to appear on the north and west sides of a lake. How the wind, sun, and other factors warm the water during spring continues to be misunderstood. Many assume winds blow warm surface water into areas and good fishing is the result, though that’s sometimes true. Warm rain, gentle breezes blowing into shore on a warm day, and run-off can help warm certain specific areas of a lake. But the main generator in the warming process is the sun and its radiant energy. The more light penetration, the better the possibility for radiant absorption. Waves hinder light penetration. Calm water absorbs more heat.

On a calm spring morning, the warmest water is on the lake’s surface. When the wind picks up, this warm water is pushed to the windward shore, raising the water temperature in this area. This effect can only last as long as warm water is being generated. The water shift causes cooler water to be pulled to the opposite side of the lake. Again, this is only temporary, especially in a big wind. The calmest areas in the lake should be absorbing more radiant energy, thereby warming faster. By mid-afternoon, when the best crappie fishing usually takes place this time of year, water on the calm side of the lake can be warmer on windy, cloudy days. It depends on the strength and duration of the wind and how long it blows in one direction. Gentle breezes and slight winds can continue to push warmer surface water into certain areas all day, especially on sunny days. But the best way to make certain is to keep checking that water temperature gauge. Until surface water on a lake or in its bays broaches about 60°F, the most active crappies appear in the greatest numbers in the warmest areas you can find.

The first groups of crappies to come into reedbeds tend to hang around the fringes of the bed. Expect them to appear first in the deepest reeds on the outer rim of the bed near the sharpest drop-offs. Later on, very active fish might push into water only one foot deep, but the biggest fish tend to prefer proximity to sanctuary and use the deepest portions of the reedbed. Big fish also like cover, and cover is relative in a reedbed. As in bass fishing, comparatively thick sections of reeds tend to attract the most fish. Larger reedbeds do attract the most, but don’t ignore smaller, isolated patches of reeds, which sometimes hold relatively small groups of big fish.

Shoreline-Connected Humps

The final piece of the spring puzzle is the most difficult to identify but consistently produces slab crappies. It involves main-lake humps, though even that description can be somewhat deceiving. These are not to be confused with true main-lake humps that rise out of a deeper basin and can be vast in area, shallow on top and not connected in any way to shore. The natural-lake humps crappies typically use in spring tend to be adjacent to shoreline-connected structure. Often these areas are adjacent to or connected to other key spawning areas, like reedbeds.

Key areas must provide the following:

• Some reasonably shallow (2- to 4-foot) water;

• Hard bottom, usually including some gravel and rock, as well as sand;

• Some weedgrowth;

• Access to confined open water.

When working a bay, series of canals, or a reedbed, look at the lake map and thoroughly explore any bars, points, or humps that connect to or saddle up to these zones, using sonar and an underwater camera, watching for connected but somewhat isolated rises topped with hard bottom or rocks.

Timing is the key with shoreline-connected humps. Consider a typical reedbed that crappies spawn in: It’s 3 to 4 feet deep throughout. Leading up to the reedbed is a large, shallow flat only 5 to 6 feet deep. On the outer edge of the flat the bottom rises to within 2 or 3 feet of the surface, topped with rock or gravel mixed with sand. It’s logical to assume that most crappies that spawn in the reedbed stage on or otherwise relate to this outer rim of the flat at some point after ice-out. Some of those crappies stay on the outer rim of the flat and use the shallow rise or hump for spawning needs, and they tend to be some of the biggest crappies in the lake.