Night can be the great equalizer—walleyes, stripers, catfish, brown trout, muskies that turn tough by day often gorge at night. But this is a brisk November evening and crappies are supposed to be deep, aren’t they? Shattering the silence in our boat, my friend flips the spotlight’s ON switch and one of the great hide-and-seek jobs in fishing is revealed.

Skip back about 10 years and I’m standing on the front deck of an electrofishing vessel, helping sample walleye populations for a state fishery department. Twin electrodes pass electric currents into the shallow waters near shore, temporarily stunning any fish in our path. When fish come to the surface, two of us jockey for position with long-handled dipnets.

That first late October night I’m amazed at the abundance of big crappies that shimmer to the surface, wide bodies contorted into forced muscular curls. Even in areas with classic walleye habitat—hard, clean bottom with mixed gravel and sand—10- to 14-inch (sometimes bigger) crappies often outnumbered the walleyes 5 to 1.

The biologists who have done this before don’t seem surprised. With us that night is Dr. Dan Isermann, a fishery scientist who today is Assistant Professor of Water Resources & Fisheries at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Isermann, also a longtime In-Fisherman contributor, has long studied crappie behavior, investigating their habits on natural lakes in Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin, as well as reservoirs in South Dakota and Tennessee. Much of his population sampling is done at night, and he has found that crappies use super shallow water after dark in fall in much greater number than almost anyone thought.

“Many times,” Isermann says, “I’ve looked down into the water around the boat and spotted entire swarms of crappies, literally following us around the shallows.” Electrofishing boats, by necessity, are equipped with powerful spotlights, mounted well above the work area. That lights draw crappies is no mystery, of course. But the fact that crappies are present in shallow water in such large numbers after turnover remains a fascinating and largely unknown fact.

In several lakes I fish, post-turnover crappies travel in schools in 25- to 55-foot basin areas. During the day, they’re unmistakable on sonar, showing as clusters of solid objects—often 5 or more feet thick—suspended anywhere from 1 to 15 feet above the bottom. Sometimes, they rest belly down on the soft substrate of these lake zones. Crappies in these areas are easy to catch with small jigs, as well as small spoons or Puppet Minnows and Jigging Rapalas. The fish aren’t nearly so easy to release as they are to catch. Crappies are deepwater wimps and most fish extracted from deeper water aren’t capable of quickly equalizing pressure in their swim bladders.

Night Moves

At night everything changes. Not all crappies using basins by day move up onto 1- to 3-foot shorelines at night, but some of the larger specimens do. And they’re highly catchable and entirely releasable.

Isermann believes that the movements are gradual, with the fish shifting from deep basins to adjacent deep submersed vegetation edges in confined open water as sunlight fades during the late afternoon. The fish hover just outside the drop-off until twilight. At dark, crappies appear on shallow, gradually tapering shorelines. Many of the fish hold no more than a few feet off the bank.

Fishery studies have never precisely documented these day-to-night shifts. Isermann’s theories surely make sense, though, considering that fall crappies are rarely caught or seen in water shallower than 15 feet during the day on northern natural lakes and reservoirs.

“In almost every lake where we’ve sampled crappies at night, major stands of hardstem bulrush have been the dominant habitat,” Isermann says. “Bulrush grows best on firm substrate in areas with good water movement, so often it’s sprouting up all across vast shallow areas open to main-lake wind-caused current, or near neck-down areas between basins. Both of these zones are heavily used by crappies at night.”

Isermann’s study lakes all contained bulrush, but other lakes I’ve fished have been void of them. In my fishing, crappies appear more tied to particular lake regions than specific cover. Some of my favorite lakes are deep, moderately fertile, and generally not known for producing crappies. The available fish can be absolute whoppers and their predictable night movements make them easy to catch. On classic crappie water the pattern often is a big numbers game. Though the fish aren’t so large as in those waters, two anglers can catch 100 fish during the average 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. night shift.

The best areas to find shallow crappies on lakes without rushes are shorelines near openings between basins (neck-down areas) or spacious ultra-shallow sand and gravel points. In all cases, deep water should be nearby. It’s some of the most atypical crappie habitat I’ve ever fished, and some of the best big-fish shorelines are nowhere near a shallow bay, or classic crappie cover. Rather, they’re shallow, hard-bottom shorelines that lie close to some of the most expansive deep open zones in the lake, and they’re usually totally exposed to wind and waves that push across the open water. Some of my best spots are on north and east shores, although this may be coincidence. Again, wind current can really pound these spots, and crappies almost always vacate turbulent waters, so I usually have a backup spot or two on the opposite side of the lake.

These crappies show a tendency to hug tight to shorelines; so the only zone to worry about is the water between the bank and the first inside edge of shallow vegetation, which is often coontail or northern milfoil. We’ve spent a lot of time scanning shallow offshore flats with spotlights, but time and again the only zone that holds numbers of crappies is the narrow sand and gravel corridor between shore and the inside weedline. One concentration zone is a narrow 1- to 2-foot trench that often runs up and down the shoreline, separating the inside vegetation line from the clear sand-gravel flat.

Midnight Snacks

“It’s not totally clear why crappies are so abundant in these ultra-shallow zones,” Isermann says. “Perhaps it’s simply an unused niche in the environment—a zone to which crappies are perfectly suited.”

At least part of the reason for their presence, Isermann believes, relates to late-hatching baitfish that make strong use of the same near-shore zones as night crappies. “In many lakes and reservoirs, we often see a significant late sunfish spawn,” he says. “A second or third bluegill spawn can occur as late as two months after the first push. These late-hatched sunfish finally reach a size that interests crappies and other fish by early to mid fall—often by mid October. Crappies feed heavily on young-of-the-year sunfish, much more so than most anglers realize. This can occur both in northern natural lakes and in southern reservoirs.”

Isermann admits that little research has focused on fall crappie diets, but he reports seeing baby bluegills frequently spit up by shocked crappies recovering in holding tanks. The physical size of their fall forage is occasionally surprising also, with larger crappies burping up 3- to 4-inch sunfish and perch.