Featured Stories

Spring brings some of the year’s best opportunities for crappie fishing from the bank. Learn how to find and catch more crappie with a shoreline approach.

Everything looked perfect for bank fishing for crappie. The water color, bottom makeup, bank slope and cover mix all seemed ideal. The only thing missing was the crappie – at least any crappie that were willing to bite!

So, I began walking and casting, targeting scattered laydowns and stumps and making “search” casts between pieces of cover. Maybe 100 yards from my starting point the chunk rock along the lake’s edge turned to gravel and the bank got a little flatter. Scattered wood a modest cast’s distance from the shore seemed shallow but looked inviting for crappie fishing.

I clipped a spring float about 18 inches from my jig and cast tight to the first piece of wood. The float barely got upright before racing sideways, and I set the hook into a solid crappie. Repeating that cast produced the same result. Twice. The next piece of wood produced a repeat performance. I had found the right set up, setting the stage a fun day of bank fishing for crappie.