| |
|
|
 |
| Crappies aren't savage fighters but one the size of this dandy will put a sizeable bend in your crappie rod. |
The Keys to Catchin' Crappie: Part 3
By Stan Fagerstrom
The spring months provide my favorite time for crappie fishing. I know other panfish enthusiasts who do most of their crappie fishing in the fall.
Whatever time of year you select, establishing the depth at which the crappies are holding is one of the basic keys to putting them in the boat.
If you’ve read my first two columns in this series on crappie fishing you’re aware I’ve said there are three essentials to catching these great eating panfish. Those three essentials are locating the fish; finding the depth at which they are holding and retrieving your lures at the proper speed.
Last week I talked about the importance of fishing in the right spots if you hoped to catch crappie consistently. Once you've got their holding spots pinned down, the
next step is to fish at exactly the right depth. I’ve had this brought home to me time after time in my own fishing for crappies.
Today the electronics you probably have on your boat can be a help in this regard. But whether you have them or not learn to pay attention to the exact depth when you first start getting bit.
I remember an experience I had fishing one of my favorite crappie spots when I still lived in Washington State. I had been fishing bass one beautiful spring morning but I couldn’t buy a bite. Finally I said the heck with it and decided to see if I could find some crappie.
Whenever I’m fishing out of my own boat I’ve always got at least one panfish rod stowed in my boat’s rod compartment. I was using a friend’s small metal boat on this particular morning and had just brought a couple of bass rods along.
Whenever I’m in my own rig I’ve also got a couple of small tackle containers loaded with crappie gear. This particular morning I had neither my usual crappie rod nor my crappie lures.
I scrounged around in my tackle box and finally found a couple of little spinner flies that had gotten in there by mistake. I cut a piece of bass sized strip of pork rind down to a couple of inches and hung it behind the fly.
Those little spinner flies were far too light for me to cast. I kept on scrounging around in my bass fox and finally found a one quarter ounce Bead Chain sinker. I attached it ahead of the spinner fly. The combination just barely gave me a lure heavy enough to throw with the casting outfit I'd been using for bass.
I fished that little spinner and rind in the shallower spots where I usually caught fish when I had my crappie tackle along. It was a waste of time. Finally, tired and disgusted, I tried to throw that light weight rig farther than I should have.
The result was a backlash that would have made a preacher practice profanity. I sat there picking at the miserable tangle of monofilament line for at least five minutes. In the meantime my little spinner fly sank to the bottom in water much deeper than where I had been fishing. It was at least 25 feet in depth.
I finally got the twisted line untangled and started reeling in. I moved my spinner-fly about three feet out of that deep water when the line tightened. Snag, I thought. Wrong! That snag turned out to be a beautiful crappie.
I sat right there in the same spot that morning and wound up catching 20 of the nicest crappie I ever took from the water I was on. Why hadn't I caught fish earlier? Because I hadn't
been fishing deep enough. The fish weren't up in the shallows where I'd expected to find them. They were much farther out.
That backlash turned out to be a blessing. Once I finally blundered onto fishing the right depth, I started catching fish. I've had this same kind of experience more than once.
Often in the spring you'll find crappie in tight clusters and at exactly the same depth. I don't know how many times I encountered this kind of situation in a number of Pacific Northwest fishing spots.
Even today it continues to amaze me just how darn concentrated crappies at times can be. I've taken hundreds of crappies from around downed logs on certain Columbia River backwaters. If I drop a jig or perhaps a little marabou fly on one side of such a log and fish it at different depths nothing happens. If I get it down to exactly the right depth on
the other side of the same darn log it's a fish on almost every cast.
You simply can't be too alert when you are after crappie. Make it a point to remember exactly what you were doing and the depth at which you were fishing when once you start getting hits. Get your lure back into the exact spot where the first one showed up.
I repeat, in the spring crappie will often be in tight clusters and feeding at exactly the same depth. They might come up to grab a lure, but they will have followed it up from the depth where they first saw it and where all of them are holding.
A word of caution. If you find crappies holed up in the branches of a downed tree, and this might be the situation almost anywhere, be sure to avoid tugging and pulling on the branches. Once you make that kind of disturbance you’re bound to spook the fish. If that happens you may as well move to a new spot.
I’ve sometimes gotten around this problem by fishing with light wire hooks. A careful steady pull often straightens out the hook enough to let it pull free. It doesn’t disturb the underwater cover in the process.
Next month we'll take look at the final key to successful crappie catchin’---fishing at your lure at exactly the right speed.
To Be Continued
|
 |
| Sometimes when the crappie are deep, a rig like this provides a very effective means of catching them. |
|
|
|
