Crappie pattern help

Hello everyone. I am still pretty green. When trying to determine what lake and where to fish for crappie, what are the general patterns based on time of the ice season you will see for crappie? I am very familiar with mid season for the slabs to be in the deep holes. But for earlier ice is there a depth or a general rule of thumb to find them? And what about late ice? Does anyone know of any good videos that talk about the patterns of crappie? I would love an IDO episode that just showed them planning what lake and why. What spots and why. I love watching them catch fish but I wish I could catch more independently without relying on my friends and family to put me on them. I am honestly overwhelmed to go out by myself because I really have no idea what lake to try. And even when I pick a lake I have no idea if it is depth or structure that I should be looking for. Any advice would be great. Thanks everyone!

Jamie:

Here’s the big thing to start… They have actually done that with regard to at least mid-basin crappies and other species…

I would expect if you have a body of water that you are targeting for crappies, right now at provided there is a decent shoreline weededge, that they would be hanging just off that weededge. Then at some point in time 4 or so weeks, they’ll make the move to the basin.

I am sure that others will chime in as well also!!!

Mark

I normally start out the Ice season fishing Crappies in Shallower water. My first spots to start looking for them are over shallow weed flats in smaller Bays or just Off the weed lines. On Sat. ( 1st ice outing of the year ) we were catching them in 5-7 Feet of water just over the weed tops. As far as last Ice I do the same thing. Look for late ice crappies either in the shallow bays they are likely to spawn in or just outside those bays. Mid Winter can be real tough. Be ready to punch a TON of holes searching for them out in the deeper holes in the main basin. Just punch holes till you find them. Don’t bother to even fish till you mark them. The next day they may still be in the same general area, but most likely you will need to just go back to punching lots of holes in search of them.

Stupid question but how do you identify where the weeds Are? Do you use aerial photos? An app? Just curious

Jamie Strowbridge wrote:

Stupid question but how do you identify where the weeds Are? Do you use aerial photos? An app? Just curious

I use the Navionics App. on my phone. Most of the lake maps will show Emergent Vegetation on them. I typically fish the lakes during the open water season and get a good idea of the weeds in a lake or at least a good idea of what depth the general weed line runs out to. Any good ice flasher will do a good job of showing weeds. You may need to punch a few holes to find the edge. Sometimes early Crappie will be real close to the edge other times a greater distance away. Most all shallow bays with have a weed flat in them. That is where Id start.

I usually look for early winter crappies to be somewhere near where they were just prior to ice up. As mentioned, live weeds will hold them in an area until the forage goes to other locations. Another thought here is that I generally look at cold water crappies as vertical crappies….their daily movements are more up and down than horizontally and schools stack up according to size. Find them in cold water and they will not have moved very far off if the bite sours. In warmer water the fish are more apt to move horizontally with schools strung out over larger areas. Warm water fish can and will move great distances in a matter of days.

When the water is cold look for structure that is near vertical as areas to hold the crappies since their movements are in tune to what the structure offers.