To get a significant and steady warming of water to a depth of 3 to 5 feet, it usually takes a steady increase in air temperature, some sunny days, and moderate winds. To heat shallow areas as deep as 3 to 5 feet under totally calm conditions, it takes longer and sunnier days than in similar areas with wind exposure under cloudy skies. As a result, wind-blocked but deep coves may be suitable for spawning later than those exposed to some wind, even though the latter have higher surface temperatures.

The 3- to 5-foot zone is important because it takes stable conditions at these depths, rather than at the surface, to trigger crappies to spawn. They spawn when the temperature at nest depth and slightly deeper is stable and increasing, near 68°F. Males may move to nesting areas at temperatures between 62°F and 67°F and build nests at 58°F to 62°F degrees, but stable increasing conditions at nest depth are usually necessary. Very shallow nests are the first to be lost if a cold front hits after eggs are laid.

An anglers’ axiom claims that the north sides of coves and lakes tend to get the most sun and warm fastest in early spring. This is partially true if trees or bluffs shade the southern shores for a significant portion of a spring day. But without shade, both sides receive equal amounts of sun, and the average and recent wind directions determine which side is warmest. Wind blows the warmer surface layer to the downwind side. If the wind has been from the north, southern shores may be warmer. Coves stretching north and south and blocked from strong winds may have one side warmer than the other, depending on prevailing wind direction. When planning a spring trip, plot recent wind trends to predict warmer locations.

Air temperatures don’t solely control water temperatures. But steadily increasing average air temperatures are often the most available predictor of a steady and adequate water-temperature rise sufficient to promote a spawn.

Inflows influence the process as well, and can cause mixing at different levels. Warm inflows can actually become the surface layer, while cold inflows may sink and move under warm surface layers. If they run deep enough, cold inflows may not slow a spawn at all. This is where a “down-temp” gauge pays dividends.

Rain and Other Factors

In spring, gentle warm-front rains often bring warmer water that floats on top of lakes and ponds, accelerating the warming process. But rain from taller clouds may come down cold, chill the surface, mix away warm surface layers, and sink to make nesting areas inhospitable to crappies for several days.

Local conditions influence warming: Light-colored vertical surfaces like an adjacent bluff or even a building can reflect additional sunlight into local areas, hastening the warming and creating earlier local spawning conditions. Outflow from a deep aquifer can supply warm water all year. In the Austin, Texas area, springs flow at 68°F to 72°F.

Anglers should monitor average air temperatures and measure surface temperatures in likely spawning coves. A continuous and steady increase in the average day and night air temperature, combined with several days of clear skies, is a good sign. Also consider the wind and rain history of the area, and look for gradually increasing surface temperatures in the coves you plan to fish. At the lake, use a temperature meter with a cable to the probe, like the Cline Finder from Catalina Technologies, to check how deep the warming effect has reached in areas protected from wind.

The past may be a good but not a sure guide to the next season. Crappies that hatched a few years earlier are the ones spawning this season. Their experience of day length and temperature stability as fry at the place they were spawned is their clue to where and when to spawn. If you caught and released their parents four years ago at a particular time and place, surviving offspring are likely to repeat the process. And individual crappies often select the same spawning location as in previous years, if habitat and water level remain suitable.

Anglers should seek areas that warm early in the spawn and those that warm more slowly later in the spring. Spawning areas exposed to wind and adjacent to deep water likely host the last spawns.

The layout of creek arms and coves can reveal places where shoreline bends trap warm water by preventing winds from blowing the warmer surface water back into the main lake. Coves with 90- to 180-degree bends often warm much earlier than straighter, wind-exposed waters.

Be sure to consider previous prevailing winds and weather patterns when studying your lake maps. Monitor surface water temps with sonar units and drop a probe to investigate key spots.

Prespawn Predicaments for Crappies

If fishing were always easy, would we love it so much? Part of its fascination is facing the challenges that each day on the water brings—where to find fish and how to get them to bite.

Some days, all goes as planned. And that’s fun—to a point. You can tire of catching dozens and dozens of crappies, especially if they’re running the same middling size. Eight or 10 for dinner, and it becomes more fun to experiment and see what they won’t bite, or whether color or lure shape makes much difference.

Without more challenging fishing trips, more of us might take up golf, a head-banger sport if there ever was one. When Tiger double-bogies, is there hope for any of us? Let’s examine conditions that conspire to make spring fishing difficult, and consider ways to continue catching fish when others give up.

Coping with Cold Fronts

There’s no greater enemy to a hot spring crappie bite than a sudden rise in barometric pressure, coupled with chill northwesterly winds that accompany the passing of a cold front. The term brings nervousness to seasoned crappie pros and weekend anglers alike.

From our readers, TV viewers, and website browsers, In-Fisherman staff frequently receive the question, “What is it about a cold front that causes fish to stop biting?” There’s no sure answer, though we know of several effects that alter fishing as weather patterns progress from prefrontal to postfrontal conditions. How these environmental variables physically affect fish remains a mystery. Decades of chasing crappies has revealed solutions beyond putting away the boat for a few days or driving halfway across the country.

Location solutions—Crappies aren’t magic and don’t disappear like creatures in David Copperfield’s magic shows. Just because your hotspot has failed doesn’t mean fishing as a whole has turned sour. Both black and white crappies typically make one of two position shifts under adverse conditions.

The first option is to bury deeper into cover. On a fine bright day under stable and warming conditions, you can sight-fish crappies holding in the upper reaches of brushpiles or under the floating pads of a lily patch. Pick a fish, pitch your jig-and-float, wait 6 seconds, and set the hook. Following a frontal passage, previously productive spots typically fail to produce much because crappies have shifted position and moved into thicker cover.

Instead of holding on the outskirts of brushpiles, for example, postfrontal crappies often bury within the protective branches. They seem to reduce activity and have a smaller strike window, but still bite baits placed near their faces. In natural lakes where weedgrowth, not timber or brush, offers most cover, crappies shift their position in like manner.

During mild conditions, they hover amid the upper stalks of cabbage and other grasses that grow early in spring. When the sun angle is right, you can spot fish as you drift along. Cloudy colder weather drives crappies toward the base of the vegetation, where they bury among the stalks. They’re no longer visible and harder to present baits to, but they still can be caught.

Crappies that have been holding extremely shallow shift deeper after cold fronts. Fish that were holding in reeds or lily pads, for example, move out to the first breakline off the flat or toward the edge of a feeder-creek channel and suspend. These edges could be 6 to 20 feet deep in clear lakes, or just 3 to 4 feet in murkier impoundments or river backwaters.

During sunny warming conditions, crappies spread out on shallow flats, and individual fish relate to isolated cover. Once they shift deeper in response to a frontal change, however, crappies school in tighter groups. To relocate them, move the boat deeper and cast along the outside of the break, moving until you get bites. Trolling this deeper edge also works. Scouting with an underwater camera reveals groups of fish that have bailed from the banks.

Presentation solutions—Once you relocate crappies that have shifted deeper off a flat, fishing can be good, despite frontal effects. Though crappies tend to be less aggressive, their greater density means you’re fishing a group of fish, not loners or stragglers. Tighter grouping also tends to heighten their competitive urge. These groups take the shape of Christmas trees on sonar. Fish the top of the “tree” first.

Relocating lost crappies is accomplished with searchbaits like mini-cranks, crappie-sized spinnerbaits, and jig-spinner combos. Run a horizontal bait through the top of the school, and a few fish will take a whack at it.

Once you start to get bites, you’ve probably found a concentration of fish. If action slows quickly, switch to smaller lures and fish more vertically. A small slipfloat is ideal when crappies have moved into the 6- to 15-foot zone and are holding closer to bottom in the water column.

When crappies bury deeper into cover, you have to hunker down and tease them out. Anchor by fallen trees, brushpiles, or weedbeds, and rig with small weedless jigs on delicate floats that signal the lightest bites. Delicate plastics like the Puddle Jumper, Cubby Mite, and Little Atom Nuggies Tail usually tempt some bites. Fish the baits as deep as you can without hanging up too much. Pole fishing also works well in this situation, as you can softly lower a bait into a small pocket, with or without a float.

Water-Level Fluctuations

Another confounding factor that particularly plagues anglers on rivers and reservoirs is the frequent rise and fall of water levels. Fronts generally bring heavy rains, and rising water covers shallow bays with extra feet of water, often curbing a hot bite.

Rising water location solutions—Rising water provides special challenges for spring crappies, since the fish tend to follow the rising water and move into newly flooded habitat, as long as the shallows remain warm. The murkier the water, the shallower they go.

Spring fishing on major rivers like the Mississippi means coping with variable flows and water levels. Rains upstream in the watershed or in the local pools mean rising water. The rate of the rise is difficult to predict, as these waters are under control of the Corps of Engineers and other water management authorities. Heavier rains may not mean faster-rising water, if the gates on the downstream dam are opened to allow water to move down the system.

A gradual rise in water level often stimulates a good bite, particularly if the rains haven’t been chilly. Water that encroaches into backwaters and feeder creeks often covers shallow brush, grass, and logs that provide cover as fish push shallower. Waters that flood trees along main river channels or feeder creeks also provide thick, shallow cover.

Problems arise when rising water makes interminable stretches of shallows available to the fish. Crappies keep pushing shallower and scatter, making them hard to find. Rising water often floods forests along the bank, rendering it impossible to navigate through the trunks or brushy tangles. Where cover is thinner, all flooded objects look like they should hold fish, but the fish are usually too scattered to catch.

In this situation, look for flooded areas that abut a steep bank that stops any fish migration. ****s, levees, and railroad grades often provide this sort of barrier along navigational waterways. In more natural systems, rising water may push inland until it reaches a hillside or bluff. To find fish, move to the barrier structure and fish whatever cover is available there.

Presentation solutions—Once found, crappies in flooded waters often bite well, as inflows of nutrients attract shad and minnows. These shallow areas also warm quickly and stir active feeding by bass, bluegills, and crappies.

At the other extreme is the dreaded drawdown, which can occur with seemingly little climactic impetus and more at the whim of power company authorities. One day you find your productive stumpfields baking in the sun or inaccessible to boats, as waters drop. It’s a sad sight to see your previously productive lily-pad or lotus beds slumped onto a mud bottom.

Falling water location solutions—As water levels fall, crappies evacuate the shallowest areas, perhaps feeling vulnerable to predators or instinctively moving to avoid being trapped in stagnant pools. Where dense cover remains, they may persist in water less than 2 feet deep, as long as it doesn’t get any shallower, and may spawn among that cover.

More often, however, crappies undertake a major shift as water levels drop. Groups of fish abruptly evacuate previously flooded areas and suspend off the mouths of bays or feeder creeks.

Presentation solutions—Trolling jigs is effective once fish move to the edges of creek channels or the mouths of bays. By varying the depths of baits, you can start to pattern their position on various spots. Slipfloats also help define preferred depth ranges, once you’ve found the fish again.

To be successful consistently, be ready to shift location, depth, and presentation approach. Prespawn crappies might seem like easy game, but changing conditions often bring a greater challenge than we expect.