HOW TO CATCH PRE-SPAWN CRAPPIE

Shallow-Water Crappie

EDITOR'S NOTE: Some of the biggest crappie of the year are caught just prior to the spawn, because not only are the female crappie full of roe but often they are still carrying their winter weights. Since pre-spawn crappie can be in various places at different times of the year in reservoirs throughout the country, any writer who tells you exactly where to look for pre-spawn crappie more than likely is talking about where to search for them on the lakes and rivers he knows. Here are some examples of where and how I have found pre-spawn crappie in the past, and where you may search for them at this time of year.

One of my favorite places to fish in freshly-flooded woodlots is around newly inundated briar thickets where baitfish concentrate. The crappie school-up and feed on these baitfish. Also standing timber in very shallow water is another strategic structure to home in on when you're angling for high water papermouths.

The key to catching these shallow water fish is to fish with minnows and jigs and hold the baits only one or two inches under the surface. When the water is muddy and rising, light doesn't penetrate very deeply into the water. Most of the baitfish usually will be swimming in less than a foot of water. The baitfish will be following the moving water into the shallows to feed off the new plant life and microscopic animals that are coming into the lake as the water floods. By keeping your bait in that very shallow water, your minnows or jigs will appear more natural to the crappie, and you'll take more fish. Most anglers' boats draft too much water or either may be too big to move into these shallow water regions. I prefer to use a small johnboat or a one or two-man type of boat, which is easy to maneuver and fish from in backwater areas. Yet another tactic I've used to catch big crappie when the river's up is to carry my Porta-Bote into the woods on my hunting club that's bounded by the river. If I launch the boat in the spring in the woodlots I've hunted in the fall, in many of these regions, which are inaccessible from the river or a road, I have no competition for these flood plain papermouths.

Crappie are members of the sunfish family, which is the same family to which black bass belong. The papermouths will react to rising flood waters just as bass do. They'll be positioned near the edge of the shore in very shallow water, facing toward the bank where the baitfish will be running. The crappie fisherman who understands how and where to find bass when rivers flood also will know where to look for crappie under the same circumstances. Remember that high water, wind and rain are miserable conditions for anglers. But just as when Br'er Fox flung Br'er Rabbit into the briarpatch thinking he was putting the cottontail in a terrible place, these are the kinds of conditions on which crappie thrive. Here's where baitfish are more abundant and easy to find since they're holding in the very top story of the water close to the bank or staying out of the current in eddy areas. For the anglers who are nuts like Danny Wiles and willing to brave the elements, flood water conditions where there's very little fishing pressure from any other anglers can prove to be the best crappie fishing of the year.

To learn more about crappie fishing, you can contact Jackie Thompson at the Lake Eufaula Guide Service, (334) 687-9595 or e-mail them at info@ledgebuster.com.