White Bear Lake Crappies

I have spent much of my 2010/11 ice fishing season on White Bear Lake fishing for walleyes. During some of these trips in mid-January, we happened to catch some fairly nice crappies. We were fishing off bottom in 16-18 FOW between two shallow off-shore bars. After catching a few 9″-10″ fish on shiners, we decided to suspend a shiner halfway up the water column. It was only a matter of seconds before the flag went up and we landed a 13 1/2″ crappie. I have since fished this same area about a half dozen times and caught many more with the average fish being between 10-12 inches. I fished it again last night after taking a month or more off. We did not get many but did eventually find them on top of one of the bars. We fished in about 8-10 FOW with weeds up 2 ft. All the fish we caught were on a buck-shot with a large-fathead right above the weeds. Our biggest fish was a fat 12 1/2″.

After reading your post multiple times it appears like you were fishing for crappies yesterday, 3/18/11, and in your picture there is a small walleye on the ice….
I hope the picture doesn’t go with the date because it would be a shame if you got busted keeping a 13 inch walleye out of season.

I’m guessing I’m wrong but that’s what I took at face value from your post. Nice crappies btw.

i thought the same thing ..

This picture was from back in January, when I was fishing walleyes legally. Personally, I would rather keep 13 and 14 inch males than the 22 and 25 inch females that I see other guys keeping.

Nice slabs.

Nice Crappies. White Bear can be a pretty solid lake if you can find them. Also, I am no detective but I am pretty sure that when you say “During some of THESE trips in mid-January” you are referring to the picture that you posted. I may be wrong but it seems as though somebody has been testing the prototype Jump to Conclusions Mat.

Thanks guys! I went back again last night and had some more luck. We did find them suspended unlike the previous night. Our pattern from then held true,however. Almost all the fish were caught on the buck-shot again, with a few being caught on a Rattling Flyer spoon. We did catch a few with waxies, but the crappie minnows and fatheads have outproduced them at about a 5 to 1 ratio.