Top 5 Crappie in the spring.

Spring time is once again upon us.  It is the time of the "big uns"  I know that big crappie can be caught in other times of years and I have caught quite a few in the cooler and warmer months, but there's something about the spring when they just get easier to catch.  They migrate towards the banks and they hit more readily, and they are there in larger numbers.  On any little stick or structure sometimes it seems like they hold there and are just waiting for a jig to drop in on them to snatch up.

I haven't kept track of all the fish I have caught through the years, but I know consistently spring time is the time when I have caught my biggest fish hands down.  When their bellies swell, and they close in on the banks and shorelines they just tend to draw me to the water every chance I get and draw my mind there on a much more frequent basis than my body gets to follow.

I am not able to list out all the top 5 largest crappie I have caught, but I have had a few years where they just seem to be more abundant.  The older I get the more I like to look back on the photos and attempt to remember to take the photos in the first place.  They take me back to that day in particular and let me relive the entire experience.  I mostly measure my fish with a ruler rather than a scale, and that's enough for me normally.

1.  My personal best fish, I caught with another fish that would have been on any other day the highlight of my trip.  Its one of the few that I've actually put on a scale,  at 4 lbs and 1 oz.  I drove immediately to buy a scale and just had to know.  I was fishing with my children and it hit a slider grub under a float.  The spring was getting hot fast and the fish were ganged up near a pile of brush that had blown into a cove.  She was fat with eggs and I thought I was fighting a bass for the first few minutes before I got her to my boat.  The other fish actually made the list as well or tied with others on it.  It was 16" and a great fish.








 2.  My normal fishing time starts really early in the morning before daylight and ends around 9-10 am in order to make it to work, or if I have a day off and it rains preventing me from working my side hustle.  Rainy day fish when the water is muddy and they just came up from the depths.  The fish still aren't colored up but they can be hungry and ready to grab your bait.  This one was just that, I caught a rainy day with a few hours to hit the water.  She popped a small 1/32 oz jig with a berkley power bait minnow in chartreuse and white.  She was on a dock and had probably just come up not too long before.  I love that big head swing those bigger fish do to let you know their size.  She was 16" and had a good belly.   Up towards the head of the lake in the river channel she was on a dock in a cove.







3.  I ducked out of a bass tournament I was asked to fish because the weather was horrible in the tournament area, the weather at home was wonderful and it was prime time for the crappie in the spring.  I spent the days I had taken off for the tournament to just fish one of my home lakes and pulled in both a huge white crappie and a huge black crappie off the same large brush pile.  Both came in on a baby shad 1/32 oz jig head.  I dropped it down into the brush and bumped it a few times.  They snatched it up and I had to fight them out of the brush slowly and carefully.  both cracked 17".  This is the white.

4.  Another rainy day fish.  The weather was getting much warmer and the fish in the lower portion of the lake had started going shallow.  Throwing right beside a stake from a broken old dock she was sitting on the shady side and I could actually see the fish flip when it struck.  She pulled back down into the depths and disappeared as she fought and I didn't see her again until she pulled up by the boat.  She hit a chartreuse and black panfish assassin on a 1/32 oz jig head.











5.  First moving back home and fishing one of my home lakes then not having to drive for hours to get back to the house was nice.  The first spring I moved back home in 2015 I was able to have a banner spring and put some huge fish in the cooler.  They just seemed to welcome me home.  I was able to cull until I had the cooler full of fish all over 13".  They all were from shooting docks with a 1/64 oz jig and a variety of colors of jigs through the morning.  I was done before lunch, but it was a very nice change of pace and I was very thankful for the haul.











The lord has blessed me with some good waters close to home and although I cannot fish saltwater regularly as I hope to some day it is wonderful to have some good freshwater capabilities within easy driving distance of home.

Deuteronomy 11:14

Winter trolling for crappie

Winter time can be a tough time to fish period.  Its mostly a battle just to mentally get out of the nice warmth of home and go sit in the wind and weather.  Once you get out though it seems to get much easier with the prospect of actually catching fish.  Crappie are still active in the cold, the bite seems to be lighter but they will still bite and you can still put them in the boat.  They seem to slow down significantly when the water temperatures drop and like a very slow presentation which makes slow trolling quite an effective way to catch them.  

The crappie tend to group up in the cold and if you catch one you tend to catch several in the same spot.  Sometimes they like a smaller bait and almost always a slower presentation.  They tend to follow the water temperature changes pretty readily when the water is shallow and the surface warms.  They go from deep early to shallow if the sun beats down on the water and warms it during the heat of the day.  It seems in the winter they can focus on a single color or color combination with more intensity than at other times of year as well.

Crappie in winter are a wonderful table fare, their fillets grow very firm and they make almost any fish recipe "pop"  There are few fish that are equal in fresh water.  The water I fish tends to hold quite a few yellow perch and bluegill as well which are both very tasty, but crappie are by far easier to fillet.  

Proverbs 25:13