Fish Black Nights to catch White Crappie This Summer
Day 4: How the Crappie Position Themselves at Night
Editor’s Note: The night was muggy. The big, thick, mushroom-shaped clouds allowed the moon only an occasional glimpse of our boat out in the middle of a lake near my home. Large swarms of gnats, mosquitoes and sometimes a mayfly circled the white beam from the Coleman lantern being cast into the dark water below. Often the heat from the lantern toasted the wings of the bugs, which were inhaled by swarms of shad as soon as they hit the surface of the water. We’d been fishing for 3 hours and only caught two or three small, white crappie. “Sometimes the papermouths don’t turn-on until 1:00 am or 2:00 am,” a fishing buddy of mine explained. “But if and when the crappie start biting, we’ll take plenty of good-sized crappie. The fishing will be so fast and furious that we can catch two crappie at a time.” At 2:48:30 am, large numbers of slab-sized crappie began to school-up under the light. We caught the crappie from 2-feet off the bottom to 2 inches from the surface in the 15-foot-deep water. Until the sun came-up, the fishing was non-stop. I held the record for the most crappie caught on one minnow when I put my fifth crappie in the boat and finally retired the bait. Four of us kept 150 crappie that weighed from 1/2- to 2-1/2-pounds each. On most productive crappie lakes, trips like this will occur frequently across the United States throughout the summer months.
 On the night I mentioned on Day 1 of this week when I fished with my friends, we caught crappie from 2-feet off the bottom to 2-inches under the surface. “Often the crappie will be holding right on the edge of a break near the bottom,” one friend reported. “As the baitfish begin to concentrate under the light closer to the surface, the crappie will move-up in the water.  Many times you can see them swim into the light and take the bait just under the surface. That’s why I drop my line all the way to the bottom and then count each turn of the reel off the bottom until I get a bite. The crappie usually will hold at one spot for some time.
 “For instance, if I start catching crappie five turns off the bottom, then when I catch a crappie next, I immediately bait again, drop my line to the bottom and reel five turns off the bottom.  When the crappie stop biting at that depth, I’ll drop my bait all the way to the bottom and begin to slowly reel-up, counting the turns I’m taking on my reel as I bring my bait up toward the surface. The longer I fish at night, usually the higher-up in the water the crappie will be. Many nights just before daylight, all you’ll have to do is simply hook a minnow and drop it over the side of the boat to catch crappie in 1 to 2 feet of water over a 15-foot bottom.”
Tomorrow: Warning: Summer’s Nighttime Crappie Fishing Can Be Addictive
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