Florida

Jim Porter, a crappie guide in central Florida, works natural lakes, sloughs, canals, and the Stick Marsh during winter for crappies. “The Stick Marsh is a manmade water-control impoundment,” he says. “It’s a shallow grass bowl, and that kind of fishing is prevalent around here. Crappies seldom have the option to go deep, but even where they have that option in Florida, active fish won’t be found much deeper than 12 to 15 feet. In Florida, crappies come to grass or wood by mid-afternoon or late in the day like clockwork, mostly being caught 6 to 10 feet down over or along the edges of the cover. They use grass lines as edges.

“They spawn from the end of February through early April. From November through February, crappies are out in open water in big schools following baitfish with no other discernable pattern to their movements. The best way to approach them is to control drift. Early and late in the day you can key on grass lines and the rest of the time you search until you find them, generally suspended. I control-drift 8 to 12 feet down, keeping minnows 2 to 3 feet off the bottom. Crappies situate just below a certain level of light penetration. I drop a bright white jig or spinnerbait, and the depth where it disappears is generally the depth active crappies are using, so that’s where I might start.

“The water is fairly dark, so 7 to 8 feet is the magic depth most of the time all winter long,” Porter says. “When you find a school of crappies using sonar down here, the school looks like a plate, with all the fish spread out at the same depth. I use a 1/16-ounce jig with a couple of split shot above it and control-drift, with about 2 rods per person. I use little 2-inch tuffy or hard-head minnows. They’re so small, if you lip-hook them they die—I tend to hook them through the back near the tail, and about the only thing that kills one is a crappie.

“From mid-morning through late afternoon, I go to the deepest water in any Florida lake and start drifting toward the shallow zones, but I don’t go shallower than 8 feet. As soon as I see grass on the depthfinder, I pitch a marker. Crappies like to get over the top of the grass in Florida. In January I have 30 feet of line out with a couple of BB split shot. If I have a breeze, I don’t use the trolling motor. The slower I can move for crappies, the better. On windy days, I use driftsocks fore and aft to drift the boat sideways. And the fish don’t spook when a boat passes overhead, down here. I use 10-pound mono to drift and I pitch with 6-pound FireLine. Late in the day, if I find crappies around wood, I pitch a 1/16-ounce feather jig, without bait.

“If I don’t have clients, I go fishing for crappies just for fun, all winter long,” Porter says. “There are so many of them, you know you’re going to catch some and 90 percent of the time we put 50 to 100 fish into the boat. If you hit the right group of fish, you can average 2 pounds.”

Perhaps no rhyme or reason exists for it, but if you search for crappies in the upper ends of reservoirs, you can find them biting shallow all winter long. So excuse me, please, while I order some plane tickets.