Search Bluffs for Hard-to-Locate Crappie

Have your winter crappie suddenly disappeared, with the calendar and landscape showing more signs of spring? This is a common occurrence during the transitional period between the two seasons, and it can leave even the savviest crappie anglers scratching their heads.

Increased daylight hours and warming temps this time of year tend to mix things up with crappie movements and play tricks on the minds of crappie anglers as to where and how they should be finding and catching the species. While going shallow is a reality already in some places across the South, there are still lots of Southern reservoirs where water temps remain cold, and crappie are comfortable in the depths. 

So, how do you stay on the fish during the fast-changing dynamics of the spring crappie season? Longtime crappie angler Gary Rowe strongly believes main river channel bluffs offer the perfect solution for minimizing searching and maximizing catching.

“Where they’d go?” Rowe asked rhetorically when he called one February afternoon to tell me what he saw, or more accurately what he didn’t “see” after blanking on an outing where he’s fished for the past 50 years. For several weeks prior, the year-round crappie angler had been catching winter crappie on Oklahoma’s Fort Gibson Lake in brush piles in 12 to 20 feet. “Not only did I get zero bites today, but I can honestly say I don’t think I ever even saw a crappie on my LiveScope.” 

Rowe is an expert with Garmin’s LiveScope, and his unit is loaded with more than 5,000 waypoints for his home lake, but even with all the knowledge and technology a rare empty livewell had occurred. “I’ll find ‘em,” were his closing words. 

“Found ‘em!” Rowe said when I answered his call the very next afternoon. “They’re right on the bottom and deep, and next to the main river channel. Good ones, too!” Then he provided the details.

Instead of making long, cold boat runs and extreme searches elsewhere over the 20,000-acre lake, Rowe decided to explore a specific structure type that allowed him to dissect a varying range of depths with minimal movement of only a few hundred yards. He focused on main lake bluffs.  

Bluffs are typically formed at the bend of a river channel where water flow has repeatedly pushed against the outside bank to create the steep-sided structure through erosion over time. The bluff face often provides a good above surface visual of what lies below in the way of boulders, crevices, rock slides and laydowns. 

In main lake areas, bluffs usually also mean there’s depth. Depth alongside the vertical structure allows fish to move up and down as desired without having to travel great distances. A river channel is like a highway for all kinds of fish and often offers the deepest water. Sometimes the main river channel butts against the bluff, or it might be positioned farther out. However, the channel proximity always makes a bluff wall attractive in the way of fish-holding cover. Regardless of distance, there are often flats and ledges situated between a bluff wall and the channel itself that provide great cover and ambush spots that many gamefish use to their advantage. Today’s “live” sonar technology gives anglers a clear and detailed view as to both cover and fish in such locations.

Fort Gibson doesn’t have extreme depth. The deepest parts of the channel run mostly between 40 and 60 feet. What it does have is great structure. Flats, ledges and cuts can be found extending from all along the channel at varying depths, ranging from just a few inches of water to tens of feet. 

Rowe was already suspecting from his fishless outing the day before that the crappie had either moved into the main river channel, or they were hanging tight to the bottom somewhere near the channel.

On search for the relocated fish, Rowe could see big schools of shad throughout, but he wasn’t clearly identifying any crappie relating to them. When he moved from the channel and atop the first breakline, typically occurring at depths of 25 to 35 feet, he quickly noticed the shad sightings had stopped. But now other species were starting to show up, including paddlefish, catfish, white bass and what looked to be an occasional drum and bass. All were moving along or near the bottom. 

There was only sparse cover dotting the flats, mostly an occasional old stump or partially buried-up pieces of tree trunks and driftwood. He also observed the telltale shapes of crappie hanging right at the bottom and tight to such cover in the 28- to 32-foot depths. Mostly it was only two or three fish at a time, but on a few of the larger structures there were as many as a couple dozen crappie. In areas where the clutter existed, fish were almost always present.

Rowe already knew what to toss. His longtime go-to 1.25-inch Bobby Garland Itty Bit Slab Hunt’R, white body with chartreuse tail, had been working well all winter, so why change now. To compensate for these considerably deeper fish, he added a “pegged” 3/8-ounce egg sinker about 20 inches above his 1/48-ounce jighead holding the lure to get a faster and more accurate “drop.”

His rod of choice was a 10-footer equipped with a baitcast reel spooled with 6-pound-test fluorocarbon line. The baitcaster enabled a more controlled hand-payout of line for better management in the breezy conditions. The reel’s fast gear ratio allowed for quick retrieves for timely repositioning of a drop to stay on a fish.

Watching on his LiveScope, Rowe dropped the lure in free fall but slowed the bait as it neared the crappie and then stopped it just above the fish. From there, he orchestrated the lure even closer to the target by using a combination of boat positioning with his trolling motor and hand/arm movement of his rod. He employed zero action to the lure, providing only subtle vertical and horizontal adjustments through rod movement. Confirmation that these fish were crappie came quickly with a hookset and nice deep-bodied white species coming aboard. It was Rowe’s ah-ha moment that he had indeed “found ‘em!”

As most anglers proficient with live sonar technology will tell you, every outing provides an enlightening opportunity to learn something more about crappie behavior. Not every crappie is going to bite. Rowe had some that participated quickly, some that expressed only minimal interest, and some that wanted nothing to do with the bait. Of course, all those moods add to the fun of crappie fishing, and to the learning experience. 

Among Rowe’s newly located fish, he estimated he’d catch about 10 to15 percent of those he successfully got his lure in position for. He also noted that it wasn’t unusual to only be able to catch a fish or two from small groups. In the larger bunches, say those of a few dozen fish, he’d find he could catch more when he’d only work the outside edges of the gatherings. 

On this particular day, Rowe also became proficient in “calling” whether a catch was going to be a black crappie or a white crappie. Through observation, he realized the fish that aggressively approached and struck a bait were almost always black crappie. He said the white crappie were much more subtle in their approach and bites. “Both,” he said, “are equally fun to catch!” 

Rowe was strategic in making his bluff selections. He shared six key points to consider when looking for the best ones in spring. 

1. River Channel Proximity – I like having the channel close to the bluff, but not right up against it. Perhaps, ideal is a channel that’s 50 to 60 yards away, with either a slow tapering bottom or a three- or four-tiered flat that separates the base of the bluff from the nearest channel edge. This type of transition area affords optimum options for crappie moving to and from spawning areas.
2. Structure and Depth – My personal preference is for a high-walled bluff that rises well above the water’s surface and has a vertical depth of at least 15 feet of water directly below. Big boulders and basketball-sized rock offer a good mix of cover that crappie like. Bluffs that have wooded growth on the face and/or near the top are a bonus, because they are constantly replenishing wood structure underneath. Emerging points and giant boulders extending from the wall into the water are also good assets.
3. Wind and Current Breaks – I’ve found the crappie bite on Fort Gibson is better out of the current. Breaks in the bluff wall’s face, especially along lengthy bluffs, can deflect wind and water current to the benefit of where crappie position and how anglers can set up to fish for them effectively.
4. Directional Orientation – When the options exist, I like east-facing and west-facing bluffs. Both orientations provide a high degree of shade at least once during the day, and each has a reflective surface that at some point could become a factor in influencing ambient water surface temps directly below. 
5. Staging Levels – The more diversity of cover and depth between the bluff and river channel, the better the spot. I like to think of crappie using different breakline depths as stop signs. The more stop signs you have to stop and hold crappie between bluffs and river channels, the more places you have to look for and find the species.
6. Spawning Areas – Broken bluff walls littered with big boulders and laydowns offer great spawning areas. Bluffs that have flat-slab rocks, inset cuts, overhangs and coves can be good areas for spawning, too. Additionally, bluffs that have one or both ends that transition into creeks and coves are excellent for attracting and holding crappie during their movement into and out of spawning shallows.

Crappie do move and for a variety of reasons. Rowe strongly believes that shad movement were the primary cause for the relocation of the fish he had been consistently catching in January and February in less than 20 feet of water. Their new area where he found them, although deeper, still had “comfort” cover to lock them in place, even if it was only as a subtle as a single stick rising from the bottom.

He felt their strongest affinity to their new deep flats preference came directly from the availability of large concentrations of shad roaming nearby at similar depths in the channel. The crappie could opportunistically feed when either they wanted to move to the channel edges in ambush to do so, or by simply taking advantage of shad wandering up onto the flats. The fish Rowe cleaned did have shad in their stomachs.

Rowe also believes these fish were in an early phase of staging for the spawn. He said the best bluff areas were ones that offered spawning areas nearby and provided a degree of protection from extreme wind and water current.

Finally, Rowe points out that the best of bluffs are solid places for catching crappie year-round. Crappie love to relate to giant boulders, so pay attention to shade, depth, current and baitfish presence when targeting such. And use the vertical range of depths from shallow to deep to help establish daily preferences that might prove beneficial in patterning the species elsewhere on the lake.