During winter, suspended crappies are a bonus in natural lakes. High-flying crappies, those big, buttery, golden slabs that float under your ice hole 5, 10, 15 feet or more off bottom, are the easiest ones to catch. When they scratch their bellies on bottom, micro-suspending one or two inches above the mud, they become harder to find.

So, why do we find crappies suspending one day and out of sight the next? To better understand when, where, and why crappies suspend in winter, consider the types of lakes we find them in. At one end of the spectrum we find shallow eutrophic and late-mesotrophic lakes. Drain the water from one of these ancient lakes and you reveal a basin that resembles a giant saucer, with very few reefs, points, humps, or other forms of fish-holding structure. You might be pressed to find double-digit depths, as well.

At the other end of the spectrum are the big, sprawling early- to mid-stage mesotrophic lakes and even some very deep oligotrophic lakes. Drain one of these monsters and, wow—structure everywhere. Shallow flats surrounded by steep drop-offs, reefs, benthic zones, chains of submerged islands, and humps, and more vertical structure, by far, than found in our eutrophic lake.

Between these two extremes exists a third type of crappie lake—one more difficult to label because it exhibits characteristics of both extremes. For the most part, these lakes lack an abundance of structure and cover. While the basins are simple and mostly featureless, they exhibit more ups and downs than a standard, bowl-shaped eutrophic lake. These lakes have stretches of moderately deep water, but nothing beyond 30 to 35 feet.

Whether or not crappies suspend has a lot to do with the layout of the lake. Crappies hug bottom to feed on invertebrates until they become satisfied. Then, they might suspend. That’s why basin shape, structure, and water depth are such important locational tools in natural lakes. Combine these with plankton migrations, and the picture unfolds.

Basin-Shaped Lakes—In structural terms, Figure A is a typically shallow, fertile, dishpan-shaped basin. Though exceptions always exist, crappies rarely suspend in these types of lakes. Mostly, they remain glued to within a foot of bottom during winter. Without fine-tuning your sonar or straining your eyes, it’s very difficult to find crappies with sonar in these lakes. But when these lakes are small and lightly fished, they represent a crappie angler’s dream come true. When large and pressured, dishpan lakes can become the opposite—a crappie angler’s nightmare.

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.

Each bay, cove, or segment of a large, sprawling lake functions as a single entity, offering plenty of opportunities for anglers to spread out and explore. The key is finding deeper water, especially in the Far North. In mesotrophic bays and lakes like these, crappies often choose to winter in basins or on flats between 40 and 50 feet deep. Find a variety of structural features (sunken islands, reefs, shallow flats, sharp drops, shoreline points, saddles between islands, etc.) associated with the deep hole or flat, and you’ve probably isolated a “crappie section.” Deep basins draw crappies in winter, and diverse structural features hold them through the remainder of the year.

Shiners, perch, young-of-the-year perch, and other forage-sized baitfish for crappies can be abundant in lakes of this type, allowing crappies to prey on minnows all year—an important consideration for anglers trying to determine what the fish might bite. In the smaller lakes discussed earlier, minnow forage can be thinned quickly, before midwinter in many instances, and anglers are better off switching to tiny jigs, plastics, and livebaits that imitate aquatic invertebrates. In fact, minnows don’t work as well in such lakes. Conversely, in the bays or lakes similar to Figure C, minnows and minnow imitations tend to produce best all winter long.

In lakes like this, crappies react in many different ways to winter—reactions as diverse as the environment they live in. The most typical reaction involves crappies suspending 4 to 12 feet or more off bottom much of the time. This is due, in part, to the larger populations of baitfish found here. The crappie’s entire energy source is no longer pinned to bottom. And it’s also likely that larger perch, sauger, walleyes, or possibly bass rule the bottom. Typically, when crappies suspend here, they can be found in confined open water adjacent to structure, especially main-lake and island points, sunken reefs, and saddles connecting two structures. Pelagic baitfish like shad, smelt, ciscoes, and emerald shiners, relating to open water most of the winter, become the primary source of food for crappies.

Crappies typically mill around in these expansive environments, even during winter. When the distance between structures is short, crappies generally swim slowly back and forth from one to the next. When the distance is large (say, a mile or more), they remain in the same general area between the structures all winter. It’s not unusual to locate them, catch a few, and suddenly find no fish visible on sonar. To stay on them, you have to keep moving. Crappies won’t move far or fast, but the tendency for them to circle the area they have defined as their winter home is almost universal during the cold months. And, as mentioned, these are some of the easiest crappies to locate with sonar in winter, because they tend to stay off bottom more of the time.

The Zooplankton Connection—In these large, deep, multi-structured environments, plankton also plays a key role in crappie location. No need for a science course, but it pays to remember several key points. Most importantly, crappies are well connected to the bottom of the food chain—by sunlight and plankton. They routinely gobble up quantities of zooplankton—and not just as fingerlings, but all through their lives. Though the human eye may not be able to see them, zooplankters remain visible to crappies throughout the plankton’s lifespan.

Plankton is light-sensitive. In summer during daylight hours, herds of zooplankton (and the veils of phytoplankton they feed upon) hang deeper, suspended in the water column. At night, they rise toward the surface. In winter, however—especially when the lake is covered with a layer of ice 2 to 4 feet thick—light penetration is greatly reduced during the day. Zooplankton can be fooled into thinking it’s nighttime all day long, so the herds rise and suspend high during the day. Baitfish respond accordingly and crappies may rise with them, holding higher as winter wears on. Ice and snow are light-limiting factors, and during the harshest winters you’re likely to find crappies suspending higher in the water column in classic Figure C lakes—higher, even, than you might be able to visualize with sonar.

What You See Is What You Get—Ironically, all of the above is pretty much the reason crappie hunting makes anglers scratch their heads in winter. If they go to a Figure C lake, finding suspended crappies on the screen all day, then visit a lake more representative of Figure A or B a few days later, they might fail to find any crappies at all if they continue to hunt for suspended fish, without simply prospecting across the most likely areas. Failure to consider basin type, light penetration, and plankton movement can lead to one of the oldest fallacies in fishing: “If you can’t see them, don’t waste time fishing there.” And that, inevitably, leads to a second fallacy: “Few or no crappies exist here.”

While it may not look like it, the crappies in each of the three lake types mentioned here generally exhibit very similar behavior during winter. But it’s in Lake C that crappies are most visible to us most of the time. On the other hand, adventuresome crappie anglers who understand these lakes may discover relatively untapped crappie-fishing opportunities in lakes like A or B. These lakes tend to have fewer access points, few if any boat ramps, and can often be found surrounded only by forests or open prairie. And, on these lakes, what you see isn’t necessarily what you’re going to catch.

It’s not uncommon for crappies to move shallow during winter in natural lakes, especially during late winter. Those same reedbeds, weedy flats, canals, sloughs, and dark-bottomed bays that attract crappies in early spring can attract them for weeks prior to ice-out. In fact, shallow (3 to 7 feet deep), late-winter patterns comprise one of the most overlooked programs going for big winter crappies in every type of lake they inhabit.