Trends Affect the Crappie Spawn

Once you start to get bites, you’ve probably found a concentration of fish. If action slows quickly, switch to smaller lures and fish more vertically. A small slipfloat is ideal when crappies have moved into the 6- to 15-foot zone and are holding closer to bottom in the water column.

When crappies bury deeper into cover, you have to hunker down and tease them out. Anchor by fallen trees, brushpiles, or weedbeds, and rig with small weedless jigs on delicate floats that signal the lightest bites. Delicate plastics like the Puddle Jumper, Cubby Mite, and Little Atom Nuggies Tail usually tempt some bites. Fish the baits as deep as you can without hanging up too much. Pole fishing also works well in this situation, as you can softly lower a bait into a small pocket, with or without a float.

Water-Level Fluctuations

Another confounding factor that particularly plagues anglers on rivers and reservoirs is the frequent rise and fall of water levels. Fronts generally bring heavy rains, and rising water covers shallow bays with extra feet of water, often curbing a hot bite.

Rising water location solutions—Rising water provides special challenges for spring crappies, since the fish tend to follow the rising water and move into newly flooded habitat, as long as the shallows remain warm. The murkier the water, the shallower they go.

Spring fishing on major rivers like the Mississippi means coping with variable flows and water levels. Rains upstream in the watershed or in the local pools mean rising water. The rate of the rise is difficult to predict, as these waters are under control of the Corps of Engineers and other water management authorities. Heavier rains may not mean faster-rising water, if the gates on the downstream dam are opened to allow water to move down the system.

A gradual rise in water level often stimulates a good bite, particularly if the rains haven’t been chilly. Water that encroaches into backwaters and feeder creeks often covers shallow brush, grass, and logs that provide cover as fish push shallower. Waters that flood trees along main river channels or feeder creeks also provide thick, shallow cover.

Problems arise when rising water makes interminable stretches of shallows available to the fish. Crappies keep pushing shallower and scatter, making them hard to find. Rising water often floods forests along the bank, rendering it impossible to navigate through the trunks or brushy tangles. Where cover is thinner, all flooded objects look like they should hold fish, but the fish are usually too scattered to catch.

In this situation, look for flooded areas that abut a steep bank that stops any fish migration. ****s, levees, and railroad grades often provide this sort of barrier along navigational waterways. In more natural systems, rising water may push inland until it reaches a hillside or bluff. To find fish, move to the barrier structure and fish whatever cover is available there.

Presentation solutions—Once found, crappies in flooded waters often bite well, as inflows of nutrients attract shad and minnows. These shallow areas also warm quickly and stir active feeding by bass, bluegills, and crappies.

At the other extreme is the dreaded drawdown, which can occur with seemingly little climactic impetus and more at the whim of power company authorities. One day you find your productive stumpfields baking in the sun or inaccessible to boats, as waters drop. It’s a sad sight to see your previously productive lily-pad or lotus beds slumped onto a mud bottom.

Falling water location solutions—As water levels fall, crappies evacuate the shallowest areas, perhaps feeling vulnerable to predators or instinctively moving to avoid being trapped in stagnant pools. Where dense cover remains, they may persist in water less than 2 feet deep, as long as it doesn’t get any shallower, and may spawn among that cover.

More often, however, crappies undertake a major shift as water levels drop. Groups of fish abruptly evacuate previously flooded areas and suspend off the mouths of bays or feeder creeks.

Presentation solutions—Trolling jigs is effective once fish move to the edges of creek channels or the mouths of bays. By varying the depths of baits, you can start to pattern their position on various spots. Slipfloats also help define preferred depth ranges, once you’ve found the fish again.

To be successful consistently, be ready to shift location, depth, and presentation approach. Prespawn crappies might seem like easy game, but changing conditions often bring a greater challenge than we expect.