JPP Crappie

[fair weather fisher]

I fished the area from Fate Sanders to the youth camp area today hunting for some large slabs for dinner. I fished with minnows for 3 hours and did not catch one keeper. I did catch about 50 small crappie, bluegills, white bass, largemouth, and yellow bass instead. I tried coves...points....5 feet of water near dropoffs......large brushpiles.....but could not catch one keeper. I tried 4 different brushpiles I know about in different depths only to have all my bait eaten by small crappie as soon as it would hit bottom. This was fun, fast action, but I would prefer quality to quantity when it comes to crappie. Where have all the keepers gone. Before Easter, during the warm weather, I found lots of giant slabs in these same spots. Can anyone give any advice. Are these areas fished out already?

[thehick176]

They are still there. One tip that has worked for me on the lower end is to weed out the small ones with a crappie jig of whatever kind you prefer. Then drop a minnow down occasionally. The bigger ones are there but they wont go out of there way to eat right now with the abundance of shad that are around.
Last weekend we caught maybe 25-30 crappie off of a couple brushpiles. We could only manage 7 keepers but they were all between 12 and 14 inches. They were deeper than i thought they would be too. From say 12ft out to 18ft my depthfinder lite up with shad. Luckily the brushpiles we were fishing were in 16ft.

[fair weather fisher]

Thanks Thehick. That is way deeper than I would have imagined they would be in. Although I guess all the crazy weather during the last two weeks pushed them deep. The deepest I was fishing was probably 12 feet and still just small crappie. I usually dont use jigs but I will try your advice. In my opinion, minnows outfish jigs 4 to 1, but with minnows at 2 dollars a dozen, it gets expensive not finding the bigger slabs. Thanks again for the advice.

[thehick176]

Not a problem at all. That's what this site is all about. I will be out there tomorrow after them again. I have minnows in the bucket in the garage right now. I fished shallow last week convinced they were there but zero'd. As soon as i started working my way out deeper we started connecting. This spring has everyone confused on bass and crappie. It's like the fish skipped the spawn totally.

[Alphahawk]

I fished Nicakjack on Wednesday....all day long. I caught no Crappie...no Gills....nothing. That has never happened to me since going down there. No one else was catching either. I fished my normal bank spots then put the kayak in and covered a bunch of water. This weather does have everything messed up. Fished VFW Lake on Thursday....zip....nothing. Guess we just will have to give the weather time to stabilize.

Regards

[thehick176]

Just got in from Priest. Started out crappie fishing and it was slow. The fish were still there and we would catch a few here and there but couldn't get them active. I blame it on the front that came through and not my fishing skills Lol! Anyway, we switched to bass fishing about mid morning and did really good. Spinnerbaits up shallow and shadraps on windy points worked for us. Biggest largemouth was around 3lbs, also had a decent smallie in the 2lb range.
All in all it was a good morning spent fishin with the wife. And having a break from our kids lol