When available and vulnerable, zooplankton and other microscopic food particles often dominate the crappie’s diet. Crappies strain them through gill rakers. Minnows, though, are a staple for luring crappies in low-light conditions and after dark. Like most predators, crappies are opportunistic and eat up minnows whenever they’re catchable. A struggling minnow impaled on a hook can’t evade a crappie for long, meaning the combination of feeding crappies and your minnow equals a bite most of the time.

Ice fishing for crappies often is productive near dark and after dark. Ice anglers like long-time Ice Fishing Guide Contributor Dave Genz, speculate that crappies must have a vision advantage over their prey at low light. Genz notes that after cleaning piles of after-dark crappies, he doesn’t remember seeing anything in their stomachs other than ground up gray matter, zooplankton, and other microscopic matter that had been strained through gill rakers.

“I don’t know how great their night vision is,” Genz says. “When we catch ‘em at night, they seem to be feeding on zooplankton. In the places I catch crappies, I don’t even see a lot of baitfish on my sonar. At best I see flickery green lines, probably zooplankton.”

Fishing experience bears out the fact that keying on them or not, minnows are effective night bait. Pat Smith, another exceptional ice angler who has contributed to In-Fisherman and is known for his attention to fishing details, notes that, “I do catch more crappies after dark on minnows than I do on other baits. Maybe a minnow excites their lateral line more.”

The ice experts further speculate that the particulars of any crappie fishing scenario depend on what each lake offers in the way of water clarity, structure and cover, and available forage. The abundance of zooplankton is not a constant from lake to lake, making it relatively more or less important depending on where you fish.

Where zooplankton is an important crappie food, Genz feels their upward vertical migration in the evening brings the crappies out to play. “I picture these crappies swimming through the zooplankton and collecting as much as they can through their gill rakers,” Genz says. “Maybe that’s why they’re night feeders, because the plankton rises and becomes available to them at that time. And maybe that’s why the bite can be good at dawn, because the plankton is moving back to the bottom.”

Minnows feed on zooplankton, too, so crappies encounter them even if they’re not keying on them. If a struggling minnow is tethered to your hook, the vibrations could lead a crappie to the minnow.

Crappies appear to be superb hunters at night, even if it’s not completely owing to their eyesight. Studies confirm that crappies feed most actively from dusk until about an hour after dark, with a second less-active feeding period beginning at dawn and lasting a few hours.

One could go on about sensitive lateral line perception in night-active schooling fish and advantages that may offer for foraging in low light. But even that doesn’t rule out the possibility that night vision may, indeed, help guide crappies to their next meal.