Crappie

The best knot to use depends in part on the techniques you use and tackle you choose. Four top crappie guides tell why the choose the knots they use.

Learn why points are hotspots for fall and early winter crappie and how to fish these structures effectively this time of year.

Pre-spawn crappie fishing delivers some of the best action of the year, and the fish’s behavior lends itself ideally to fishing and jig beneath a bobber.

A childhood thrill returns to Terry Blankenship every spring when pre-spawn crappie fishing heats up at Lake of the Ozarks. The Missouri guide and tournament angler recalls how excited he would get watching a bobber zip underwater when he was a kid, bobber fishing for crappie. Blankenship continues to experience that excitement today, albeit with a more sophisticated bobber setup.

“We all love our bobbers,” Blankenship said. “Bobber fishing for crappie is a little bit like topwater fishing for bass. It’s just something, if you have done it a bunch, you are kind of focused on that bobber, and when you are fishing with artificial lures instead of minnows you have to be pretty observant and pretty quick with it. It kind of keeps you a little tense if you feel like you are in a position to get a bite. It winds up being pretty much like the excitement of a topwater bite because of the way crappie sometimes hit it and knock it to where it goes down so fast, but other times they just barely nudge it or turn it sideways.  That’s why you really have to pay attention to it.”

Learn about the Mayfly, an innovative new crappie bait to be released by Bobby Garland this summer.

Great fishing secrets are hard to keep, and word has gotten out that a new Bobby Garland bait – The Mayfly – is on schedule to “hatch” in July. So rather than letting rumors confuse the facts, here are full details about this cool creation in advance of its summer availability.

The Mayfly is a 2.25-inch insect-profile design that stays true to Bobby Garland’s reputation of product innovation specific to crappie fishing. This new soft-plastic bait is loaded with features appealing to multiple senses crappie rely on for feeding.

Warming water temperatures prompt crappie migrations toward spawning areas. Learn how to find and catch spring crappie.

When crappie initiate their move toward spawning areas, anglers from Oklahoma to Connecticut head to the lake!

The primary pre-spawn and spawn trigger is water temperature. Across the country, crappie pre-spawn movements begin when water temperatures approach 50 degrees, with crappie moving to staging areas close to spawning flats and banks. When the shallows maintain a temperature close to 60 degrees for several days, bedding may begin. Nests are constructed moderately firm bottoms, generally in protected areas. This yearly ritual may begin as early as February in the Southern states or as late as early July in states along the Canadian border.

Learn how to make the best use of live sonar technology to improve your crappie fishing efficiency and catch more fish.

Early “Fish finders” were used primarily to find fish, as the term suggests, and to determine bottom depths and locate structure. Over time, technology has evolved, creating far clearer and more detailed pictures and many types of views and allowing anglers to determine bottom make-ups and find both structure and fish far more effectively

The latest electronics technology, live sonar, makes it far easier for anglers to recognize fish species, target specific fish and see how the fish react to lure presentations. It is highly popular for crappie fishing and extremely helpful if you know how make the best use of it.

Live sonar technology, which reveals high-resolution images of fish swimming and responding to lures, is available now via Garmin’s Panoptix LiveScope, Lowrance’s Active Target and Humminbird’s MEGA Live Imaging. For Dustin McDaniel, an Oklahoma tournament angler and guide (GFB Outdoors Guide Service, 417-437-5047), the ability to interpret what he is seeing on his Garmin 1222 unit with its Panoptix LiveScope transducer, has become a game-changer.

Hiring a crappie guide can be extremely beneficial and more cost-efficient than you might imagine. We spoke with several veteran guides about how to make the most of a guided fishing trip.

The start of a phone call once had crappie guide Brad Chappell wondering if he had unknowingly caused real problems. The caller said her husband had spent $6,000 on crappie gear and wanted to know why Chappell was “making” him buy all that stuff. Her husband, a fairly recent guide client of Chappell’s had been calling regularly since the trip to ask specifics about Chappell’s gear – one week about electronics, the next about rod holders, the next about baits… But Chappell hadn’t TOLD him to buy anything!

Then, with a smile in her voice that Chappell could hear, the caller said she was really calling to thank him because while her husband really had spent that much money, the two of them were truly enjoying crappie fishing together!

Learn the benefits of adding soft plastic lures to your ice fishing arsenal and how to use those baits effectively.

I can easily recall my first time ice fishing with soft plastic lures because it was my first time ice fishing. I fished with a couple of fishing industry friends, both veteran ice anglers from Minnesota. Jigs and spoons owned the ice fishing world at that time, and few ice anglers ever used soft plastic lures. To me, though, it seemed like the same lures I used for vertical presentations to cold-water crappie and bluegills on open water should work through the ice. So, I begin my ice pilgrimage by going against the grain, using a soft plastic crappie bait on a jighead that wasn’t even an ice jig.

Fishing from marinas and other docks provides a great way to consistently catch crappie during the coldest time of the year. Here’s everything you need to know.

You will never hear Chris Edwards call himself a winter crappie dock-fishing expert, but considering this avid outdoorsman’s history with the activity and the container of splashing slabs hanging in the water nearby, there’s no doubt he could.  

Edwards has a lifetime of dock fishing experience across Oklahoma that began in his youth when his parents had a place on Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees. Thereafter, he’s always had a dock somewhere in the state – Texoma, Keystone, Ft. Gibson and Eufaula. He’s made sure of that with one season and one purpose in mind: January to March crappie fishing.

As winter progresses and light penetration under the ice lessens, rattling sounds and glow become extra important for helping fish find your baits and for triggering strikes.

With several inches of snow atop ice that’s more than a foot thick and the fish near the bottom, nearly 30 feet below, there is no sunlight to make a metallic spoon shimmer, and it’s tough for fish to see even the boldest lure color unless a lure is almost touching them.

Predator fish find forage largely by hearing, sensing vibration with their lateral lines and via scent through the heart of winter. Lures that rattle deliver critical sound. Tipping lures with natural bait provides scent. Don’t stop there as you consider ice offerings, though. Lures that glow bring the fish’s sense of sight into the equation and help them find your lure even in the darkest of waters.

Learn how crappies, bluegills and perch move as winter progresses and discover the best ice fishing strategies for capitalizing on that understanding.

The progression of winter delivers changes beneath the ice, and as conditions change, fish must move to new spots and alter their behavior. Finding ice fishing success through mid-winter begins with considering the transformation that is taking place and adjusting accordingly with locations and strategies.

Fish Ed and Destination Fish host Jon Thelen spends much of his awake time on the ice throughout winter, whether scouting, filming or testing lures, so he has an outstanding sense of how fish behavior changes as ice season progresses. In Minnesota, where Thelen does the most fishing, changes in panfishing scenarios become noteworthy late in December and early in January.

Learn the value of a float and a jig used together for mid-winter crappie fishing and how two guides use float strategies to put more fish in the boat.

“Often they won’t pull it under,” Lee Pitts said about the float portion of his Float and Fly rig. “It’ll just tip a little or start easting sideways.”

Pitts knows. As a crappie guide on legendary waters of Weiss Lake, Pitts spends most winter days on the water. Winter delivers some of the best action of the year, and one of his most productive crappie fishing techniques when the water gets cold is the float and fly approach, which refers to fishing a jig beneath a set float for slow, subtle presentations at a prescribed depth.

Beaver Lake crappie guide Greg Robinson also relies heavily on floats for winter crappie fishing. That surprises many people, Robinson noted, because they only associate bobbers with extra shallow water. However, Robinson and Pitts are commonly presenting jigs 6 to 10 feet deep. The key is that the float suspends an offering in the strike zone and allows for the extra slow and subtle presentations that are sometimes needed for winter crappie fishing success.