During the spring, anglers enjoy the opportunity to lay aside trolling rigs and vertical jigging poles for a while and pick up ultralight outfits to cast jigs to crappie. As effective as other strategies can be, there’s something really fun about casting a YUM Wooly Curltail past a treetop, reeling it slowly past the cover and waiting for that telltale tap on the line.
Crappie rarely hit hard, and they aren’t fierce fighters. Still, they put up enough resistance to be fun to fight on ultralight tackle. Plus, where you find one, you often find many, creating the opportunity for very steady action.
While the basic tactic is the essence of simplicity, several variables come into play. Before you can catch crappie, you have to find them, and once you hone in on a school, you have to find the best bait, color, depth and cadence of retrieve.
Unless the crappie are spawning, they generally won’t be way up in the backs of creeks and coves. Instead they’ll be in brushpiles and laydowns, along riprap banks and beside docks, often in the mid-sections of creeks. Late in the spring, most fish will be near the mouths of the creeks or on the main lake, closer to the deeper spots where many will spend the summer.
Finding fish often requires covering a lot of water. Cast to plenty of targets, seeking variety as you go. Fish man-made and natural cover alike, probing a variety of depths and all types of areas. Work quickly, not spending too much time on any given piece of cover, but fish the baits slowly. Any time you catch even a single fish, slow way down.
Keep a couple rods rigged with different lure styles and colors, and if you’re fishing with a buddy be certain you always have different things rigged. If you find a fish or two, it’s time to really start experimenting. You may discover that there are far more fish in a spot then you realized once you hone in on the right bait.
Great lures for crappie fishing include 1 1/2-inch YUM Wooly Curltails and Wooly Bevertails and 2-inch YUM Vibra King Tubes. For casting situations, 1/16-ounce leadheads typically work well. However, it’s good have 1/8- and 1/32-ounce heads available so you can adjust for conditions.
Generally speaking, slow and steady retrieves are tough to beat for crappie. However, it never hurts to experiment with jigging motions or stop-and-go retrieves. You can control depths by pausing before you begin each retrieve. Count to yourself before you begin cranking and vary the counts in order to experiment with a range of depths.
One you’ve honed in on the ideal count and figured out that the fish want black and blue Vibra King Tubes, you are in business. When the bite slows, go back to looking. Chances are very good the fish will want the same bait at the same depth at the next productive location – and it probably will look a lot like the spot you just left.