Need crappie advice

Guys,
This is the first year my daughters’ activities haven’t prevented me from doing some serious fall fishing. So I’ve been out a LOT the last couple months. The first thing that’s obvious is when the water cooled the fish moved from their summer hangouts (at least where I’d typically find them). I still find a straggler here and there, but I’m stumped.

My number one favorite way to fish is vertical fishing cover in 12 to 25 fow, but that doesn’t seem to be very productive after the water cools. So I slow troll my jigs at various levels, and troll crankbaits (long-line and on a 3-way) looking for signs of life. But that usually isn’t very productive for me. I’ve even been casting floating raps in the shallows out of desperation, not really expecting much.

I absolutely LOVE crappie fishing on Wissota, but all I find is a few walleye the last three weekends (5 days, 8 hours per day) out. Can anyone offer some advice as to what type of areas the crappie might be using this time of year? I suspect they might be suspending over deep water, not relating to anything in particular. I’ve trolled jigs and tiny crankbaits slowly around the little lake and in the yellow river hoping to stumble across something. But I don’t see any suspended targets on the sonar and there’s just too much water to cover randomly.
Any advice is appreciated. Sure wish I could afford structure-scan (since I’m a Lowrance fan)…

I saw your trailer in the lot on Saturday. I found some crappies up in the chip and in the Yellow. They sure show up beautifully in Humminbird Down Imaging. Willing biters on a 1/16 oz jig tipped with a minnow!

I hope you get into some crappies soon- they sure are fun.

I don’t know what it’s like up there, but down here I’ve caught the most crappies this year that I ever have. A lot of these fall crappies have come on a v-e-r-y slow presentation with marabou jigs. I like to tie two on my line about a foot, foot and a half apart. Hopefully the fish will tell me which color they like better. I really feel that when the water cools, it’s better to go with marabou rather than plastic. The jig/minnow can be hard to beat, too.

I guess those are my biggest suggestions: fish real slow (which you’re onto already), and maybe try some feathers as well. My experience has been for marabou, the bushier the better.

Oh, and something else I just thought about- don’t forget about tipping your jigs with crappie nibbles. It has seemed to me that when the water get cooler, that’s when they make the difference for me.

Hope you’re able to get into some before the water turns solid.

Here’s a deep school of crappie in the Yellow River, identified in Side Imaging and Down Imaging. These fish were in ~ 30 fow, off a small shoreline point.

1/16 oz white BFT jig and minnow, fished slowly through the school, turned a few for us on Saturday.

This is what the crappies I found looked like, side scan and regular sonar….mississippi pool 5

Jason & Eddy,
Thanks for the pics. That clues me in that I need to spend more time in or close to the channels, and less time around cribs/brush out from shore. It also tells me they might be relating more to the bottom than I thought, versus suspending in the upper 20 ft. Saturday is forecasted to be a decent day so I’ll try to get out and hunt the fish down.
Eddy, I’d love to see my sonar light up like that. The only time I’ve seen that is on Nelson Lake in the Hayward area. I came around a point and it lit up with red streaks from bottom to top. I thought it was submerged trees, til I started fishing. I usually fish two jigging rods, but that school had just one rod going non-stop til my partner got tired of catching panfish and wanted to go for bass.

Jason, you mentioned jig and minnow. I’ve been doing very well on the Gulp Alive minnows. Have you tried them to see how they compare to a live minnow? I’ve done that type of comparison between a live leech and Gulp minnow and both walleye and crappie showed a strong preference for the Gulp minnow. In fact, the big crappie slurp up the 3″ Gulp like candy all spring and summer.
I wonder if that’s too big a bait for this time of the year. ??

John, thanks for sharing your results with Gulp. To be honest, I have had mixed success with that product. I’ve found little windows, primarily early in the season, that the 3″ Gulp Alive curly-tail minnow is the BOMB. That correlates with a time that many of our favorite species are shallow. Once that window closes, I am typically transitioning over to crawlers or cranks, with minnows my preferred cold-water fall presentation.

Sent you a PM with a couple spots to check out!

I got out last Saturday and didn’t find crappie yet – other than one straggler. But I did do well for walleye before 7:30am and after 4:45pm. Daytime hours were pretty slow, but this pike added some excitement.
I did the muskies a favor and took the pike home for Sunday lunch.