where to find the crappies?

i am wondering where I will locate the crappies, normally ther eis a hole or two, in the shallows in may, but come June/July they disappear. the only problem is there is realyl only 1 deep spot in the lake and it is only 12 feet. some how the lake does not freeze out, but is very weedy all over. I have been struggling to locate them after memorial weekend. any advice for looking would be great. this is a lake in wisconsin that i know of that has back bays and such. i do not target crappies often in the summer with the kids but think of giving it a try since we jut had a fish fry for the kids and are looking to re-stock for them to have one this winter. i locate them then go get the kids to catch them so works out for both of us.

also are crappie minnows a better way to go instead of waxies right now? as we usually use waxies but fight off all the sunnies.

thanks-
Broncs

Broncs,

A good search tool this time of year for crappies are crank baits. Can you troll on the specific lake you’re talking about? If you can, watching your finder for suspended ‘specs’ and slow trolling small SR5’s and short floating Rapalas have taken many crappies for me. From how you described it the lake you’re talking about is almost void of natural structure(aside from weeds), are their cribs in the lake?

Pete

No cribs that I know of on the lake. there is some structure….points and in-lets (where I find them in may) and bays for them to get out of the wind at, but other then that there is not much.

Run into a lake similar to this, they seemed scattered and off the bottom, we ended up doing really good, pulling lindy rigs with green (not real sure the color mattered) floating jigs tipped with minnows, nothing else seemed to work. Hardly marked fish that day, but we sure caught’em. Until now I forgot about that, I gotta go out and try that again on that lake.

In the past if I could mark fish we always did really good casting tube baits off the back of the boat and trolling them along, usually we had to go fast to get the bites, and if we started missing a few fish, we’d slow down just slightly. I’d say we were in the 1.5mph range. Too slow we wouldn’t get bit, some days you we have to tip it with a crappie nibbler to get bit. This was a pattern we run a lenght down shore, marking fish, eventually you’d find some groups of fish to cooperate then we work those groups.

I agree with Pete. We’ve been having good luck pulling cranks. The good news is that you’re in WI, so you can try a variety to see what works. We typically pull 6 lines (provided there are two of you in the boat). We’ll use 2 planer boards out each side, and 2 lines straight out the back on bottles (see explaination further below). We have good luck on Hot-n-tot’s, shad raps, little rippers, etc. By using boards with tattle tail flags, you can spread everything out expanding your search area, and trying a variety of cranks. It’s also a nice way to get everything out away from the boat in shallower water in case the fish spook from the boat. You can vary the amount of line from the boards/bottles to the cranks to try different depths.

Bottle set-up: We take an 8 ounce gatorade bottle, drill a small hole in the top, and bolt a planer board release to it. Let out as much line as needed, clip on the bottle and let out more line to get the bottle out away from the boat. It works great!

Another method I have used is pulling a 2 hook crawler harness with a spinner and a 4 inch brown Exude crawler. I use a 1.4 oz bullet sinker to get it down off the surface. Also you can use a twister tail on each hook instead of the crawler. The other trick I have used is to go late in the evening and wait for them to surface in schools and then pursue them with the electric trolling motor.

Try fishing weed edges and pockets with tube jigs under a bobber experiment with depth. I usually fish 4 to 8 f.o.w but if you have deeper weed edges try them also and yes minnows can be the ticket.Also if you can try casting small original raps along the weeds and if they are not up to the surface go right over the top. And try differant retrieve speeds also try twitching them on the surface if fish are taking bugs off the surface.

Good luck

Ajs