Elusive Crappie

I have a lake just at the end of my road. I haven’t fished it a lot, but figured I should start this year because I can be there an walk out to a number of spots all within 10 minutes. The convenience can’t be beat.

That said this is also one of the first seasons i’m really starting to target crappie. So, I’ve been heading out a little before dusk some nights, and fishing til an hour or so after dark. Each time i’ve gone out i’ve consistently marked fish most of the night. Each time i’ve caught exactly one crappie, nearly 11 inches each time. Beautiful fish, but only one. I don’t even get any other bites. My question is what would you suggest I try to convince more to bite. I have to believe some of the marks i’m seeing are also crappie. Seems unlikely to me that each time one random 11 inch crappie is swimming around all by itself.

I’ve been using small jigs tipped with either waxies, spikes or a minnow. I’ve also had a set line with just a plain hook or small jig and a crappie minnow. Should I be trying some of my rattling jigs like rip’n raps, or maybe a vmc spoon or something? Again, i’m fairly new to really crappie fishing. My instinct was to just go with small panfish jigs, but evidently that’s not super productive.

Thanks for any input.

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Can you tell us what lake and where your at? That would help.

Are you using a spring bobber of some sort? I used to think the flasher only showed fish with lock jaw. Turns out they just bite really light.

Maybe they arent as active after dark, some lakes I fish the crappies are more active during daylight because the water is stained

Maybe I’ll try getting out a little earlier. Also yes I’m using a spring bobber on one rod and just a slip bobber on a set line on the other. I know the lake has a lot of small perch, so it could just be them, but it seems unlikely to me at least some of them aren’t also crappie

matthew:

Several things could be going on really and some of them have been touched on already.

Questions come to mind:

Stained water??? (Already touched on)

Not fishing aggressively enough??? (Bigger bait profiles, moving bait up in
water column)

Are you in the basin or fishing edges??? (Again you are in contact with fish
and not sure this makes any difference)

Once it gets dark, are you noticing lots of green marks coming off the bottom??? (Blood worms coming off the bottom)

Are you getting the fish off the jigged stick or dead stick???

Hopefully answering some of these questions may help us to help you develop other tactics that might improve your fishing.

Mark

I would say to give it a shot during the daylight hours as the water maybe stained. I would start in the basin area and use a spoon of some sort tipped with euro larvae. I like small Tingler spoons (glow). Fish above them. For example, if you are fishing in 25 foot of water you should be able to see the crappie coming up to intersect the spoon as you drop it down. Aggressive fish will intersect the bait in the 15-18 foot range.

mbenson wrote:

matthew:

Several things could be going on really and some of them have been touched on already.

Questions come to mind:

Stained water??? (Already touched on)

Not fishing aggressively enough??? (Bigger bait profiles, moving bait up in
water column)

Are you in the basin or fishing edges??? (Again you are in contact with fish
and not sure this makes any difference)

Once it gets dark, are you noticing lots of green marks coming off the bottom??? (Blood worms coming off the bottom)

Are you getting the fish off the jigged stick or dead stick???

Hopefully answering some of these questions may help us to help you develop other tactics that might improve your fishing.

Mark

Mark I’ll go down the list here and answer your questions.

1) Stained water – Yes. Definitely.
2) Fishing Aggressively – I have. I stated out with very small panfish jigs and waxies, and have tried everything in between from rattlin flyers to rip’n raps, i’ve tried slow jigging, fast jigging, pounding, smacking bottom etc. The fish continue to come in, take a look, and fade away.
3) basin or edge – I’ve been focusing on finding little inside and outside turns on the edge of the basin. I’ve not yet gone out to the middle of it all, but that’s my next spot to try, I was going to tonight but it’s the Santa parade… gotta bring the kiddos.
4) Blood Worms – I don’t think so. Most of the marks are legit red marks like you’d see any other time of day.
5) Jigging stick or dead stick – Night #1 all on the jigging stick. Night #2 All on the dead stick with crappie minnow. Night #3 one on each.

I do realize that so much of fishing is just trial and error, so please don’t misunderstand my whole post as thinking there’s some magic trick to all this. I’m more just reaching out for some additional options that I may not have considered. I know crappie can be finicky, and I know many of you have spent many more hours than myself trying to get them to bite, so your years of wisdom are well respected by myself. Thanks for the input so far, looking forward to getting back out there and trying again.

If they are Crappies and are at all aggressive they should like others have said raise up to you bait as the lure is falling to them. If you had said you were not fishing a spring bobber my 1st thought would have been you were just missing the bite. Often I’ve fished with other who said the fish are there but not biting only to catch a fair amount of these non biting fish. Sometimes the bite it so light that you will hardly even notice the spring move. Watch for a slight up bite – often the spring does not move down but just releases the slight bow that have on it. The other thing is that they may be crappies and just not feeding for some reason. Id also try and load you small jig with lots ( 4-5 ) of Euro larva ( Maggots ) Keep refreshing them often as well.

Drill a lot of holes Crappies usually school in the shape of a Xmass tree unless actively feeding they will cover several depths in the same school and spread out a little more. Crappies always feed up so want to keep the bait above them. Crappies many times are on the move sometimes slow and other times they will cover a lot of water. Keep moving sending down your transducer down until you find a school stacked up, then be ready to move if they leave your hole.

In the fishing you have done you may be picking off a fish on the edge of a school.

matthew:

Have you been able to get your jigging biters to raise off the bottom and if so by a lot of height in the water column??? The biggest reason I find crappies so much fun is the ability to get them in 20′ of water to come up as high as ten in the column… It makes it the most of fun!!!

How light of a line have you used??? I always am using 2# for those fish in the basin away from big weeds…

That’s all I have for now, there have been some other great ideas as well..

Mark