Winter Crappie Tactics

[ten_scoach]

I've been reading a lot of previous posts on this forum and other websites about winter crappie tactics. Here is my question, do crappie hold in brush piles during the winter? From what I've been reading the experts like to fish around schools of shad but I haven't figured out how to find those with my low level electronics. I can find the brush piles though with my GPS. As soon as this weather breaks I'm going to head up and get after em.

[Dutch]

I believe you can catch crappie in or around brush piles all year long. However, I haven't done well around the brush lately.

That shad school thing is a mystery to me too and I have pretty good electronics.

[powerdive]

Yes, brushpiles in any depth can be productive this time of year. Not all brushpiles will hold fish at any given time, though.

Any sonar should have no problem showing shad schools--they'll look like big globs down in the water column. For my deep fishing I generally go to places where the river channel brushes a point, then cruise in and out over the dropoff looking for fish/shad. The channel rim is a key spot for walleyes, especially, but you'll find walleyes and crappies alike suspending inside the shad schools.

On New Year's Day, we caught crappies on the channel drop where it was 54-58 feet deep. We positioned our lures anywhere from 1 to 8 feet off bottom, as that's how thick the "show" of fish was. And we also caught some from a thick brushpile on a quick-sloping point. The water was 30-40 feet deep and the brush topped out at 25-30 feet, so we just tickled the tops of the tangle, and the fish came and got 'em. (Note: we saw some hooks in and around the brush, so we knew there were some fish there.) Our one walleye came from inside a small 2-3 foot thick shad school that was right on bottom next to a 4-foot ledge that went from 34-38 feet.

Fun stuff!

[ten_scoach]

Thanks pd. really enjoyed what you shared in the fall walleye thread too.