 “What
to Do When a Cold Front Hits Your Crappie Lake”
Big Crappie on Grenada Lake
EDITOR’S NOTE: Kent Driscoll of Cordova, Tennessee,
a professional tournament crappie fisherman, has been
fishing for crappie for over 30 years and really enjoys
fishing all over, but particularly Grenada Lake in north-central
Mississippi. Regardless of the weather and the water
conditions, he has to be ready to fish on  tournament
day. In late March when Driscoll and I fished together,
the temperatures had plunged from the 70s to the 30s,
and the water level on the lake rose 10 feet. If you
fish for crappie in the spring, sooner or later, this
will happen to you. Here’s how Driscoll solves
this problem.
One of the reasons I like to fish Grenada Lake in Mississippi
is because there’s so many big crappie in this
lake. Grenada has been known for big crappie for many
years. The lake is extremely fertile, and it has a large
population of shad. Two major rivers feed the lake.
One is the Yalobusha River that runs up the east and
west arms of the lake and is the muddier of the two
rivers. The second river is the Skuna River, which is
typically more clear than the Yalobusha side of the
lake. The Skuna River warms up faster in the spring.
So, early in the crappie  spawn,
I’ll usually fish the Skuna side of the lake because
it’ll be warmer, and the crappie there will be
searching for that warmer water. After I’ve fished
the Skuna side of the river for the initial spawn, I’ll
change and go to the Yalobusha side to get that first
big run of crappie when the fish start moving to that
side of the lake. The north and the northwest side of
each one of these two rivers will always warm up first.
When the north side of the lake spawns out, I’ll
move to the south side of the lake and fish Redgrass
Creek, Wolf Creek and Butputer Creek.
Last year in March, I was fishing by myself at Grenada
Lake and caught 10 crappie that weighed a total of 26-1/2-pounds.
Three of the fish I caught weighed more than 3-pounds
each. Those 3 pounders weighed 3.6 pounds, 3.4 pounds
and 3.31 pounds. Two of my friends  were
fishing close to me, and they caught two crappie that
weighed more than 3-pounds each. The following day,
I caught two, 3-pound-plus crappie, and my friends took
three, 3-pound-plus crappie. We combined our catch and
weighed the 10-biggest fish, and they totaled more than
30 pounds. There aren’t many lakes in the nation
where you can go and make that kind of catch in a weekend.
You can’t catch big crappie like that every day
at Grenada, but the days that you do catch them, you’ll
remember them for a lifetime.
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