Trends Affect the Crappie Spawn

Location solutions—Crappies aren’t magic and don’t disappear like creatures in David Copperfield’s magic shows. Just because your hotspot has failed doesn’t mean fishing as a whole has turned sour. Both black and white crappies typically make one of two position shifts under adverse conditions.

The first option is to bury deeper into cover. On a fine bright day under stable and warming conditions, you can sight-fish crappies holding in the upper reaches of brushpiles or under the floating pads of a lily patch. Pick a fish, pitch your jig-and-float, wait 6 seconds, and set the hook. Following a frontal passage, previously productive spots typically fail to produce much because crappies have shifted position and moved into thicker cover.

Instead of holding on the outskirts of brushpiles, for example, postfrontal crappies often bury within the protective branches. They seem to reduce activity and have a smaller strike window, but still bite baits placed near their faces. In natural lakes where weedgrowth, not timber or brush, offers most cover, crappies shift their position in like manner.

During mild conditions, they hover amid the upper stalks of cabbage and other grasses that grow early in spring. When the sun angle is right, you can spot fish as you drift along. Cloudy colder weather drives crappies toward the base of the vegetation, where they bury among the stalks. They’re no longer visible and harder to present baits to, but they still can be caught.

Crappies that have been holding extremely shallow shift deeper after cold fronts. Fish that were holding in reeds or lily pads, for example, move out to the first breakline off the flat or toward the edge of a feeder-creek channel and suspend. These edges could be 6 to 20 feet deep in clear lakes, or just 3 to 4 feet in murkier impoundments or river backwaters.

During sunny warming conditions, crappies spread out on shallow flats, and individual fish relate to isolated cover. Once they shift deeper in response to a frontal change, however, crappies school in tighter groups. To relocate them, move the boat deeper and cast along the outside of the break, moving until you get bites. Trolling this deeper edge also works. Scouting with an underwater camera reveals groups of fish that have bailed from the banks.

Presentation solutions—Once you relocate crappies that have shifted deeper off a flat, fishing can be good, despite frontal effects. Though crappies tend to be less aggressive, their greater density means you’re fishing a group of fish, not loners or stragglers. Tighter grouping also tends to heighten their competitive urge. These groups take the shape of Christmas trees on sonar. Fish the top of the “tree” first.

Relocating lost crappies is accomplished with searchbaits like mini-cranks, crappie-sized spinnerbaits, and jig-spinner combos. Run a horizontal bait through the top of the school, and a few fish will take a whack at it.