Saturday Tom Bruggeman and I ventured down to Banner Creek Kansas to do a little bass fishing. Well the first fish of the day was a 12" Crappie. We finished the day targeting crappie.
We started out on near a point casting a Lucky Craft SKW mini crankbait near recently fallen tree. Well right of the bat I caught a couple 12" crappie. Later in the morning we moved to the upper end of the lake where we fished most of the standing timber. With the same crankbait we put another couple crappie in the boat.
Mid afternoon I decided to try a Lucky Craft pointer so I tied on a chartreuse Pointer 65. We found the bass wouldn’t leave it alone. I wasn’t disappointed to get onto a bass pattern, but the fish we were catching weren’t very big. So I decided to put on a bigger jerkbait. I tied on a Slender Pointer 97 in the Mat Pumpkin color. This color kind of resembles a bass. Being a mat color instead of giving off a lot of flash it seems to absorb light. It wasn’t long before we discovered the crappie were all over it. I threw this bait in and around the standing timber fairly quickly. Most of the hits were on a pause on the shady site of the tree. The biggest crappie was close to 17". I thought we took a picture of it, but it wasn’t in the camera. I used this same method earlier this spring to catch crappie at the Lake of the Ozarks.
We talked with a few others fishing crappie with smaller more traditional methods and fishing seemed really slow for them. What we were doing seemed to work pretty well. In about 3 hours time targeting crappie we caught 11 of them ranging from 12" – 17". Next time you are fishing for crappie while they are getting ready to spawn try a bass colored bait. The bigger crappie were coming out and attacking the bait.
might have to try that method sometime. Do you think a baby bass patern slider would work?? I’ve got a bag of them i should try after reading your post. Nice work on the slabbers. Been nice to see that 17″ fish. That’s a dandy!!
Nice crappies Jason!
I think anything with baby bass color would work great while the crappie are spawining. It’s kind of how the yellow perch color gets the smallies attention on some of my favorite South Dakota lakes when the smallies are begining to spawn. Baby bass color also starts to work again for bass once they stop guarding the fry.
Jason