Natural Lakes

It’s not that crappies can’t suspend in such lakes, but likely that the water simply isn’t deep enough for them to feel comfortable in suspension most of the time—which is why night-fishing can produce an entirely different result. Of course, crappies sometimes have no choice but to suspend in these types of lakes. By mid- to late winter, these lakes can suffer oxygen deficits from biological activity within the relatively shallow substrates. Oxygen deficits are most common in lakes that are shallower than 15 feet at the deepest point, and/or have heavy weedgrowth or heavy algae blooms during summer. In late fall, aquatic weeds wither and die. Algae dies, also, and blankets the bottom. As this organic material decomposes throughout winter, it steals oxygen from the water. Without a great deal of water volume to begin with, dishpan-lake oxygen levels can quickly drop to levels where crappies find survival difficult. At that point, they suspend to find more highly oxygenated water closer to the surface.

Dishpan-Plus Lakes—Now add an appendage to the basic dishpan-shaped lake and several feet of depth, so it resembles Figure B. In winter, the deeper eastern basin becomes the key crappie location. Though the western basin will attract crappies in spring, anglers could fish it all winter and struggle to put together one meal of crappie fillets. It’s as if all the fish swam downhill.

Crappies in the eastern basin of this lake will suspend in winter, but not in the manner we often picture crappies suspending, 5 to 10 feet off bottom. In lakes of this type they tend to hover only 1 to 3 feet off bottom. After a cold front, it may not be possible to mark them with sonar, as they tuck close to bottom. On such lakes, it pays to prospect with underwater cameras and tiny jig-and-maggot combinations, as the fish are hard to mark with sonar and tend to be feeding on insect larvae, aquatic worms, or tiny crustaceans when pinned to bottom.

Lower a bait into a likely spot and often a mushroom cloud of crappies suddenly rises from bottom to intercept it. If the lake is lightly pressured, after catching several fish it can be possible to coax the school into hovering higher than usual—6 or 7 feet off bottom, waiting for more food to descend from above.

Like the shallow, fertile crappie lake in Figure A, however, some of these lakes are prone to oxygen deficits late in winter. When this happens, crappies can be spotted much higher in the water column. In fact, if oxygen counts become dangerously low, they sometimes mill right under the ice over the deepest part of the basin, where the snow and ice is likely thinnest and whatever sunlight can penetrate continues to fuel the only oxygen-producing agents left in the lake—phytoplankton.

Best for Last—We’ve saved the best type of lake for winter crappies for last—at least, it’s the easiest one for most anglers to figure out, with a slightly increased amount of recruitment every spring. The lakes illustrated in Figure C could also be viewed as bays, or portions of much larger lakes that have several equally good areas. That’s why these lakes are ideal, if you don’t lose the trees for the forest. Some anglers are intimidated by a big-water scenario, but it’s simply a matter of breaking down the lake into sections—each section containing every type of habitat crappies need throughout the year, including mid-depth basins (20 to 45 feet deep) for wintering purposes. Each section could represent the total area used by a population of crappies that rarely (if ever) coexists with other populations in other sections.