For several years I have seen more and more instances where crappies of average to quite large size have sunfish young in their gut starting about now and lasting all the way thru the summer months. Late fall is the only time I have not found sunfish fry in the gut of black crappies and I suspect that the late fall sunfish migration takes the small ones out of the equation since crappies generally make the full fledged winter shift much later on. Two years ago I began using some baits that were called bluegill and were generally a clear plastic with some blue and other glitter colors blended together. I cooked up a blue gill color that was shown here a couple weeks ago. I have done some more cooking and have come up with a color that resembles on I had left that was slightly different.
The bait on the left is bluegill. The copper glitter in the plastic in the sun gives it the reddish cast and a hint of blue and violet hi lites helps in the color play but by itsel on a jig appears crystal clear with glitter. The other two baits are of the new batch and have a little turquoise colorant and turquoise hi lite added to help bring out some depth to the bait. If you look carefully you can see the hi lite come to life inside the baits. The camera cannot capture it, but the surface of these two baits is glssed over with a turquoise sheen that is unreal.
The tail gets lost in glare, but the center bait is a two inch paddletail while the other two are 1.75″ shads. Both of these fall in line with the sizes of the sunfish fry I have seen inside crappies.
Two years ago I was on the ice of a local water catching some real nice crappies over deep water but at mid column. These fish were on the hunt. I sorted a few to eat as I caught them, the big and the small went back and I was looking for 5 nice 11″ fish. It took an hour to get the meal’s worth and I came home. When I opened the pail of water to clean the fish there were perhaps twenty of these small sunfish that had been expelled by the crappies. While fishing I noted a ton of bottom activity and I suppose the smaller sunfish were getting pushed up out of the way by the larger more aggressive fish and became targets for the crappies working just above the pack. In other waters I have seen the same thing where a strong perch base can be found.
