Crappie updates

Big boat is off the IR, so I’m ready for specks-Any updates? Details Bear? Might try a new lake or an old favorite.

tim hurley wrote:

Big boat is off the IR, so I’m ready for specks-Any updates? Details Bear? Might try a new lake or an old favorite.

I fished a small lake and all the crappies were suspended over the 22 ft basin. I pulled a snell with 1/2 oz weight, 5 ft snell and real small red hook. I guessed on the depth i was fishing but tried to stay completely vertical with boat thats why I used a heavier weight. I fishe 10 to 15 ft down. With the largest fat heads I found in my scoop.
I’ve done it 2 more times now and its been on every time

Is it best to check the basins out and when you see lots of suspended fish just try their first or is there something i should be looking more for on my depthfinder. I take it minnows are the best baits to try at this time of the year

mrpike1973 wrote:

I take it minnows are the best baits to try at this time of the year

Minnows work ok. Plastic is better as is Gulp. I just don’t understand this dependence on minnows, or any live bait for that matter.

mrpike1973 wrote:

Is it best to check the basins out and when you see lots of suspended fish just try their first or is there something i should be looking more for on my depthfinder. I take it minnows are the best baits to try at this time of the year

I use both but a larger fat head has been out fishing my plastics lately for crappies. And il always moving them. I have caught some nice ones on plastics to but the numbers went down.
No dependence on live bait but its always a good option to bring with. Crappies are on a feeding frenzy either way. And the bite changes daily

Finally got into some good specks and the lake is small enough where I can walk out when the time comes. I could tell you 5 different ways the launch is bad but that might have something to do with the fishing being good. Ok I’ll just tell you one thing, shallow launches I can deal with but this is like shallow and irregular, uuugh. Anyway fish were in 33fow, some close to bottom some mid-depth, caught some on minnows but most on plastics(thanks Tom).Lake is on the Icy short list.

Tom Sawvell wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>mrpike1973 wrote:</div>
I take it minnows are the best baits to try at this time of the year

Minnows work ok. Plastic is better as is Gulp. I just don’t understand this dependence on minnows, or any live bait for that matter.

Completely agree with this. There are times when live minnows will catch more but it’s rare I can’t get them to bite with gulp minnows. I’ve even started dipping other panfish plastics/lures into the gulp juice and it seems to make a big difference with them as well.

mrpike1973 wrote:

Is it best to check the basins out and when you see lots of suspended fish just try their first or is there something i should be looking more for on my depthfinder. I take it minnows are the best baits to try at this time of the year

I’m no expert but I’ve been doing a lot of homework this fall really trying to learn this fall bite. What I’ve found is there are two schools of thought for this time of year. The first is going shallow. Like 2-6 ft near weeds or wood. The second is main lake structure near the basins and if you don’t find them there, move out to the basin and look for them near the bottom and the colder it gets start looking for them to be suspended.

Haven’t been able to put this to the test too often this fall but the few times I’ve been the deeper tactic has proven to be true at least from what I’ve seen on my electronics. Haven’t caught many but they seem to be in those areas.

WE sure put the spank on crappies in the backwaters this morning. 6-8 feet of water with little, if any, current fishing the jigs at about 4 feet. 1/16 purple heads with 2″ purple/chartreuse or junebug/chartreuse Kietech Swing Impact look-alikes. Crappies were all 12″ and the sunfish were all 7 3/4″ to 9″. Sunnies all went back.

The pike are hot and heavy in backwaters right now and more than a couple passes were made on sunfish being cranked in. Two sunnies were nailed and cut/peeled. Pike looked like 28″-32″ range.

We’ve noticed a definite time slot on the crappies with the bite falling flat on its face by 9 am and sunfish seem to let up then as well.

WE fished the morning of the 13th until the harsh wind made casing to where we needed to get impossible. This morning we ran into the same scenario. We caught equally well on both days with the ratio of larger fish to smaller starting to lean towards smaller a bit but not bad yet. I think next week will see a drop based both on past history [chronologically] and the much colder weather driving water temps down fairly quick, now we’re not seeing much heating during the daytime with the stiff winds.

We’ve been fishing a semi-sheltered area with a small amount of current seam within casting distance. Very early on for the last two trips we’ve had relatively clean water to cast to until the wind begins to drive dense, floating masses of slough grass and duck weed. These mats were so thick this morning we could not get a 1/16 jig to drop thru it. Literally every cast called for cleaning something off the jig. Any direction of wind that has west related to it has been poison for us and ironically the east winds have been super productive.