LOCATING EARLY CRAPPIE

[Phil Lilley]

This will be developed into an article... so give it your best shot.

We spent the morning cruising around and fishing some banks and flats, looking for crappie. We fished in 8 to 24 feet of water and stayed close to the bottom.

My question- how do YOU locate early season crappie on Table Rock or any other lake? I know everyone has spots- that's a given. But if your spots aren't producing or you're going out cold-turkey, what do you look for? Depth of water- structure- gravel- mud- pole timber- ledge rock???

This is a real great question for those who who feel like they don't have a clue most of the time when fishing for crappie. I know most of fishing is raw confidence in where and how you're fishing... this may instill a little of confidence for some who read the responses.

[Bass Bustin' Bogie]

Hey Phil,

Sounds like to me you guys found the little slabs to be in more of a transition today than they were Thursday! Good news! Sounds like they're testing the shallows!

Bass Bustin' Bogie formerly petertherock

P.S. Looked for you yesterday at the resort!

[Dutch]

By now means do I call myself a crappie fisherman but I do fish for them some in the late winter.

What I do is go to river bends or the confluence of 2 streams and slowly cover the area with the boat looking for large schools of shad. Everytime I find one I mark it on a gps.

When I have covered the area to my satisfaction, I drop the trolling motor and fish from one waypoint to the other casting a jig or swimming minnow. The depth of the water and wind determine the weight of the jig head.

As the bait falls I keep tension on the line hoping for a suspended bite. If I get none, I hop the thing off the bottom back to the boat and repeat the process. When I catch a fish, I mark it on the gps, stop the boat and fan cast the area either catching more or deciding it was a fluke.

Also, it never hurts to count the bait down so they you can repeat suspended bites if there is a school in the area. But like I said I don't consider myself to be a crappie fisherman.

Other than that I vertical jig fish to 70 fow but that is a whole other topic.

[Sam]

One good thing about crappie - they don't go very far. I've read that most crappie never move more than 1/4 mile from where they're hatched, and I think that's generally true. That means good crappie areas of the lake always hold crappie, they just move around within those areas depending on the season and conditions.

In very early spring, they're going to be staging right down the middle of major coves - especially near the cove entrances. If there's flooded timber nearby they'll move in and out of it, and on sunny days they'll move into the shallows on nearby sandy banks to get warm. They don't move far, though, and "home base" is mid-channel in the cove entrance.

Later in spring they'll be staging on rocky banks near those cove entrances, first the males, then the females. After that, they'll be on nests on the cove banks and in flooded timber, of course. Post-spawn they'll be in bunches on banks within a couple hundred yards of their nesting area, usually in about 15 feet of water - and that lasts until they go into thick brush and flooded timber for the summer.

Since I know a whole bunch of generally good crappie areas on Tablerock and Bull Shoals, I don't have to search the whole lake for them. Within those areas I'll cover a lot of water at first by slow-trolling with the trolling motor and watching the scope. I'll slow-troll a 1 1/2" Swimmin' Minnow on a 1/16 or 1/8 oz. lead head jig and cast the same rig up into the shallows and around brush. Once I locate crappie, it may be more productive to stop and cast or jig straight down for them, or it may be better to just keep slow-trolling back and forth over the same area.

Another thing to remember about crappie is that they'll come up for a lure but they'll never go down for it. It's easy to slow-troll too deep for them, and if you're bumping the bottom you're probably going under a bunch of fish.