I’m a bit of a newb to fishing for crappie in late fall but last year I didn’t seem to have any problems finding schools and vertical jigging them. The last week I’ve been out twice specifically targeting them on deep weed edges, sharp dropoffs, main lake points, and humps, but haven’t marked a single school which I found very strange. Has the absence of any type of Fall really impact the crappie or am I just losing at the cat and mouse game?
Two years ago we had a beautiful fall. I drifted across the main channel of the flowage I live on and hammered as many crappies as I wanted to catch until the temp hit the 40s. The fishing was not quite as good with the sub 50 degree water and I switched from plastics to minnows to consistently catch fish. Stable weather was the most important factor and 2nd was a nice drift wind….
Try looking in open water away from any obvious structure when the water temp is sliding downhill and we get a heavy duty cold front. Open featureless water buffers the effects of these weather things for crappies and they can stay suspended out there for a few days until they acclimate to the changes, then they move back to structure. Fall is a major feed-bag period for crappies but they will react when multiple changes are occurring at the same time.
Was out yesterday evening and we did very well on crappies. But it took a little while to figure them out. They didnt want minnows under a bobber. They didnt want small raps. We ended up drifting over them repediatley with hair jigs and a mouth hooked fat head. Boom it was on. Must have caught 50 crappies between 2 guys in 45 minutes. Ran out of fat heads before we wanted to be done. 13 to 20 ft of water. Smaller lake near forest lake
We’ve had a lot of luck with lindy rigs, long snells, plain hooks and as lite of weights as possible drifted over basins where they congregate in the winter, when weather gets problematic. Have caught a lot during the day close to the bottom and not marking much suspended. Turn over can affect everything differently in each individual lake too day by day.
Plain hooks with crappie minnows.
I’ve been able to catch some of the fish I’ve found, I just haven’t been marking schools the last two or three times out.
Smaller lake near forest lake
I was also in the Forest Lake area. Wish I wasn’t working evenings so I could go during that window. Morning bite has been tough on me. The crappie bite on this lake has been going down the last couple of years though, especially through the ice.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
