There are a lot of things one can do to up their catching on the lake.
First would be to leave the anchor at home so the temptation to use it gets whiffed. Next would be to leave the live bait in the bait shop. Then understand how crappies move at this time of year and finally get some specific tackle to go after them with.
The first two items are your choice. The third option requires some thought. Crappies on shallow shoreline water are nesting/nested. They don’t swim up and down the shore looking for things to do. Their movement is from the channel to the shore and back again. Fish looking for a mate or nest site are on the channel side of the primary break and move with or against the current out there. Obviously this will require different approaches. On the shallow shoreline water you want a small float to carry the bait at a specific depth. Generally that means not in the rocks. 18″ to 2 feet is a fair standard to follow and the floats/baits at this depth will work to about 4 feet. So you know, you’ll find the better fish spawning or nesting in the water from 4 to six feet because the depth equates to stability in the spawning environment. Smaller fish get pushed out of the prime spots by the larger fish and use the shallower/shallowest water. The deeper fish that are on the move requires you to be on the move as well. Larger more aggressive baits can be used on the moving fish because they tend to actively eat while prowling. Getting rid of the float while moving also helps. So does hook design in the jighead. Having a swimming-type head allows a natural swimming appearance for the bait instead of a lopsided, tail tilted up bait appearance. Like I said, this area takes some thought…think about it.
The picture shows two different jig head styles and 4 different plastics that right now the crappies are hot on. The jighead at the top and the paddletail mounted on it are a great combination for the channel stuff. The head shown is 1/32 on a #6 wide-gap hook with a 35 degree leg. This head design is a super swimmer. A 1/16 size helps to stay fairly vertical if the wind or conditions makes staying vertical hard with the lighter head. A couple other baits are shown using the conventional 90 degree leg hook and these fly under a float nicely and do a great job of keeping the baits horizontal.
The paddletails just mentioned are 1.75″ in length. Another paddletail is seen at the lower right. This is a Culprit bait and just a hair under 1.5″. It also has a narrower profile which lends itself to float fishing nicely.
There is a stinger-style bait at the lower left. This bait is also another very good under-the-float bait and tends to be real specific to crappies for some reason.
The no-name baits in the center are excellent when sunfish are in the catching mix, but they take sumo crappies just as well. These are definitely float baits where a controlled depth is sought and work like no tomorrow on shallow nested fish. They also make a great warm-water summer bait when crappies and sunfish are suspended.
The colors shown are what’s working in our boat. The purple/chartreuse numbers are the go-to colors. The Bluegill clear/chartreuse tail is also a solid producer. Blue/chartreuse tail is not shown but also a great mid-day shift color. For reference, I start the day with purple/chartreuse and end the day with the same color as a rule. The other color seen in the no name bait is glow. This one proved to be a sneaker the other day and did a real good job on some of our largest crappies.
Getting rid of the anchor and minnows would be the first things Id get rid of if I was serious about getting fish. Staying mobile is imperative if you want numbers and size. Anchors simply get in the way of effective fishing practices. Small fish are a way of life at this time of year but minnows will almost assure you of plenty of dink action. You get the dinks on plastic too but the overall size of the larger fish will be larger period. Fishing plastic will eliminate a ton of the small fish competition for live bait. Want dinks? Fish minnows.
Shoreline fish are fairly easy to tell whether you are being hit by a male or a female fish too. The ladies are constantly hungry and need to eat a lot to help ripen the spawn. Once they are done with egg-laying they get right into the feedbag. When they hit the float does an immediate deep dive. The boys now, when they hit they aren’t really eating that much and most hits will show up as a tick on the float followed by a fairly fast sideways movement. They are tending the nest and won’t tolerate any other critter in there. They like to pick up the offender and carry it off a ways and spit it. The male then goes immediately back to the nest. Ever notice that when you get one of these sideways hit you can never seem to get a hook-up? The males are simply picking the bait up like it was a small craw and uses only the outside of the lips to do this. Many times the hook-ups seen on hits like this are outside of the mouth or in the lower jaw. Just something more to think about.
