Key On The Forage Connection To Stay On Their Tails

Many shiner species, like emerald, common, spottail, and rosyface, spawn over gravel and sand bottoms in lakes, while golden shiners spawn in near-shore vegetated areas. These areas, when young-of-the-year shiners are abundant, can be top spots for crappies. Some shiners school in shallow nearshore areas; others, like the emerald and spottail, are often pelagic—schooling and feeding in open water—where they operate much like small shad.

The same presentations used for shad-eating crappies work well for crappies keying on shiners. Look to tubes, jigs, jig-spinners, smaller crankbaits, and small rattlebaits for plying open water and near-shore areas. Black-chrome-silver color combos mimic shiners, as does the flash of smaller hairpin-style spinnerbaits like the Johnson Beetle Spin.

A food-habits study done by Iowa State University researchers in Spirit Lake, Iowa, showed that young yellow perch dominated crappie diets in fall, presumably as a strong year-class of perch grew to the preferred size for crappies to eat. When crappies key on young-of-the-year gamefish, try patterns that replicate forage, like perch or bluegill patterns in smaller diving or suspending hardbaits.

Invertebrates

Wading through a stack of literature reveals no cases where one food type was exclusive to diets of crappies overall. Depending on the lake or season, invertebrates can dominate or at least make up a good portion of the diet.

A closer look at the Spirit Lake study, for instance, shows that although large black crappies ate fish during certain periods, the most important foods overall were insects and other invertebrates. In Lake Goldsmith, South Dakota, larger crappies ate more fish compared to smaller size-groups but consumed substantial amounts of insect larvae and zooplankton, noted South Dakota State University researchers Chris Guy and Dave Willis. In two Kansas reservoirs, Tom Mosher of the Kansas Fish and Game Commission found that mayflies (Hexagenia) were important during the spring and early summer, before fish were eaten more heavily later in the year.

Crappies feed primarily on the larval stages of insects. Those known to be favorites include Ephemeroptera (mayflies), Diptera (known as “true flies,” including midges), and Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies), among others. Other important invertebrates include amphipods (scuds), annelids (worms and leeches), and zooplankton (cladocerans like Daphnia, and copepods).

The connection between crappies and invertebrates, although there much of the time, can be difficult to establish from an angling perspective. Most of what’s happening down below is invisible. At any one time, crappies could be feeding on bottom for midge larvae or mayfly nymphs, picking off insects in the water column as they migrate towards the surface to emerge as adults, or feeding on amphipods from near-shore to open water, depending on what’s available, which can be different from lake to lake.

But in many cases, lakes become known for seasonal hatches, giving you a heads-up on a potential pattern for crappies. Mayfly species each have their own hatch pulse, so when you find evidence of a hatch, it may be a clue to catching more crappies. Many species of mayflies become especially vulnerable from spring into summer, but crappies could feed on mayflies at any point during the year.