Locating Crappies

[Walleye #1]

I live near Caledonia, MN and there are a couple of small lakes right near town. The one in particular that I fish most often gets to about 15' deep hole and I know their are crappie in there but I have had a tough time finding them.

Should I key on this deeper water? Or should I look more shallow. The times I have fished shallow I have only picked up gills. Just looking for some advice.

Do crappies suspend alot in the winter? I don't have a vex, so that makes suspending fish a bit more difficult.

Also is there any presentations that seem to out perform others for crappie during hard water season??

Well just looking to get on top of some of these fish. Any help is greatly appreciated.

May your bobbers stay under
Be Safe
Walleye #1

[FI Guide]

Well the first thing is what kind of structure is in the lake drops, weedbeds, trees, flats, humps, points. For 15ft i would go as deep as i could and without a vex start at the bottom and work your way up until you find the crappies. Drill a lot of holes in the area. When i look for crappies i drill about 10 holes all around in an area then check the holes. When i find a hole with fish i drill about another 5 holes around that area. Crappies move around a little but stay in the general area. For a presentation i like a plain hook with the smallest crappie minnow you can get. This has been a strange year the crappies are only biting on the small minnows. Or another jig i like is a glow northland forage minnow with the minnow once again hooked below the dorsal fin. Good luck and hope you get some of those slabs.

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Dan Ament
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[CrappieJohn]

I know that there are some impoundments in your area. The water you mention, is it an impoundment? This sturctures are desined to hold excess water and , when built, mostly likely had existing timber left standing when they filled. I'd look to the deeper end of the lake to find fish. Without the electrnics, I would fish a small glow teardrop (red) on light(2lb) line and tipped with a small minnow by dropping it to the bottom and slowly jigging from bottom to the top of the water column. A trick is to slip o small rubber bobberstop on your line. Use a depth finder weight to find the bottom quickly, set the stop to about two inches below the surface, bait up a start fishing. As you fish , say a two foot piece of the water column from bottom up, you adjust that stop to show the bottom of that particular column of the water and jig maybe two feet higher than the stop is set. Fish this set depth for five maybe ten drops and then drop the stop another two feet. If you get a dump, you'll have an instant reference to get you back to the level the fish are working. On the other rod, try soaking a small minnow about five feet off the bottom under a float to start. If either rod shows a good bite, adjust the other to the hot one. To help narrow down the search if you fish this water in the heat of summer, go back to where they were being caught then. I mentioned trees earlier...if this water is an impoundment and has has standing wood near the deep end, fish close to it and look for the craps to be anywhere in the water column. As a shortcut, look for craps to be quite deep in the bright of day and shallower at the dusk periods. FI guide has some good info about punching other holes when the fish are found. Craps do move from one little area to another on a horizontal plane in the winter, but not far at all. They are more prone to vertical movement right now. In a small puddle this works to your advantage if there is limited deep water. In about a month you will want to be aware that they will begin to get restless and begin to "flatten out" in thier daily patterns and may even start to show some interest in shallower shoreline water very near to the deep stuff and when this occurs your attempts to locate them will need to be larger in scope. They will, regardless, still be quite relative to the deep water until the ice is gone and the water has warmed to a temp of about 46-48 degrees and will even then retreat to the deep stuff during radical baro pressure changes. Should you hit the jackpot, I would urge you to practice selective harvest to ensure a future fishery. Hope this helps.

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Plastics...making better fishermen without bait! Good Fishing Guys! CrappieTom
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[This message has been edited by CrappieTom (edited 01-11-2004).]