Question about crappies.

[High Tide]

Alright, I promise I'll stop being so needy in regard to these questions, but I have one more thing that's been on my mind, and I would appreciate your feedback. When crappie fishing, I'm always looking for fish on points, channel edges, wood cover, etc.  What I never target is deep expansive basins, mainly because it seems like alot of drilling in  dead water, but I'm wondering if I need to reconsider.  Do any of you guys fish "middle of nowhere deep basins (25 fow+)" for crappie through the ice? And if so, is it a lake or resevoir, and does it hold Shad?

[IceJunkie0602]

I do it in a lake and to find them I take a couple of pieces of pvc with a 90 deg bend.  Put your vex wire in one end and pull it through and plug it into your vex now you can look side ways under the ice and get a direction and how far to drill another hole until you get on top of them.  This is also handy when you are on a school and they move away from where you were just catching them.  you can put the rig down and see which way they are moving from you.  Sorry I don't have a pic.  but I know someone on here does because thats where I got the Idea.

[DEADONDYLAN]

your in box is full

[High Tide]

your in box is full

Sorry about that I just lost my Militia status, give me a second to renew.

[brad]

1 word in my opinion 2 stay on them   STRUCTURE   ya u can find them almost anywhere but they just  move thru if you want a consistant bite find structure (stumps, rock ledges road beds fallen trees  O ya and BAIT

[rcjim]

They head for those deep basins a few weeks after ice is on

[A- bomb]

deep water drilling on natural lakes can not only be good but is sometimes the only way to find them!

[High Tide]

Sorry about that I just lost my Militia status, give me a second to renew.

I renewed, but the status hasn't updated yet  . 

[DEADONDYLAN]

Its ok your getting the answers I was going to give mine were a little too lake and spot specific to give to the lurking public you share your wisdom on here enough to get a tip on one of my spots.

[RonSki]

 I'm no expert by any means, but from what I've seen that really depends on the lake and the preferred forage. Shallow lakes with more weed cover often have most of the crappies in the weeds. These lakes you can catch crappies all day long down IN the weeds. At night, they'll come up and out and roam around the weedline. Everyone knows a lake like this, where sometimes the only crappies you catch are right at twilight, they just magically appear for an hour or so and they are gone.

 Deeper lakes with more open water, especially clear water, almost always have some fish in open water. Usually these are the lakes with the biggest crappies, but they can be very hard to find. And it's worth noting that in these lakes, there can be two different open water populations. You usually either have suspended fish, just roaming the basin, or you have fish on the bottom. Lakes with expansive, deep, open water, usually have more suspended fish. These are really just a shot in the dark trying to locate and stay on them as they don't stay in one spot, they're always moving. These are usually the deepest lakes, with basins over 40ft deep and clear water. The 30 foot basins seem to have more fish that relate to the bottom. These fish are usually bug feeders as opposed to the open water roamers which are minnow feeders. The fish out here in the deepest part of these moderately deep basins can be easier to find, but are usually spread out. You would be looking for bottom transitions out here, specifically a softer bottom which holds more bugs, especially bloodworms.

 There are so many facets to this. First ice versus late ice makes a difference, but the lake TYPE dictates where they are during each phase of the ice season. Early ice there's crappies shallow almost everywhere, as long as there are some kind of weeds around. (I've never liked points for crappies myself. Moderately tapering flats with good weeds seem to be better than points as far as I have seen.) Late ice on some lakes, almost all of the fish drop off into deeper basins. Some suspend and some roam the bottom. This depends on depth, bottom content, and water clarity.

  The biggest crappie I have ever caught was in 32 feet of water in a basin that reached 40ft and came up off the bottom. I haven't ever found a large school out here, they're just scattered and hard to locate. I prefer to look at water clarity first, depth second, and quantity of weed cover last and start from there. It's all a puzzle with a lot of pieces to put together. the presence of shad in a lake might predispose more fish to be out roaming the open water, suspended, but I still believe the type of lake makes more of a difference. (Shad grow fast and can be out of a crappies size range by winter.) I tend to think crappies are way more bug oriented in winter than most people think. They might gorge themselves on newly hatched shad in the summer, or all the other little minnows that are everywhere at this time, but in the winter, they get the most food for the least effort by browsing on the soft bottoms and picking off bugs.

  Hopefully theres SOMETHING useful you can pick out of this and use. I don't chase crappies all the time, but I used to spend a LOT of time trying to figure the darn things out. It's different on every lake, and that's what makes it such a pain in the butt!!!      

[High Tide]

RonSki, thanks for the reply, and I agree 100% with everything you posted, but would like to add shad definitely grow quicky and to big for most crappie, however, if the lake has shad and gills then the gills stay forage size longer, so most crappie switch gears to gill, crappie, and bass fry (but I still think they move toward insects more as the ice progress and the fry gets bigger because it's less stress trying to catch them, which is why I think I need to target the basin.  Since you like a puzzle as much as I do let me give you a few more details:  This reservoir has almost no weeds, murky/stained water, one large basin with 35 fow, tons of docks, very little structure outside a few brush piles and stump fields (no timber), tons of main lake points, very few bottom transitions, and I have never seen a bloodworm when cleaning these crappies (opening the stomach, almost always shad or gill fry). Would you still consider the main lake basin?  Also, if the water is muddy, they hold to the docks all year, but if the water is just murky or stained, they won't.  You make the call  , and anybody else that wants to include a comment.

[RonSki]

  I would definitely spend some time searching the basin there. Specifiaclly, I would start OFF the ends of the points, at whatever depth it starts to flatten out and work out from there.  With no weeds, the docks have to hold some fish, but you'd have to fish a bunch of them and drilling holes right over their head in shallow water might just be counterproductive. The dirty water would suggest that he fish will be scattered and roaming the basin, and the tips of the points would offer sort of a narrowing effect of the basin, or at least a contact point. Do you fish here during open water? That would be the best time to REALLY sout the whole lake for those hidden transitions (IF there are any).  Also, do the locals put any brush piles in? This seems to be common alot of places to put brush piles off the ends of the docks. There might not be many, but finding a few of these could be GOLD! You might just have to take me with you to figure it out 

[wax_worm]

Great advice Ronski!  I don't really specifically target crappie, but I do find them mixed right in with the gills in alot of lakes I fish.  Some of these crappie are suspended over the deep basin.  You will be gill fishing on the bottom in 20+ ft and then a few marks show up suspended and if you get your lure up to them they usually bite they are usually crappie.  Some years ago we used to target the crappie in the fall over 50 ft of water in wawasee and they would be 12 to 25 ft down in huge schools.  Once you found them they would bite pretty good, but I have not tried this in the winter in the same spot.  By the time that freezes and is safe in that area, I am usually fishing different lakes or on a perch search.

[High Tide]

RonSki, I fish it a ton on the open water, and have a 898 hummingbird (side scan), so nothing is a secret (and can detect bottom transitions with ease).  I fished it the day before it iced up, and hammered them on a main lake point, that has a ton of dropped stucture on it.  The ice allowed me one day to fish that very spot through the ice and not one fish was caught on the structure, but we did get a few on the channel that runs next to it.  Now it is open water again  , however, I will send you an PM when it's ready to go, to see if your available for a basin hunt.  There are definite monster crappie in this lake, so hopefully it will be worth our time.  Waxy, I heard about the very thing you're talking about on Wawa, and I heard they are normally hogs! 

[HighPockets]

High Tide were you ever able to get out to the beach area that you, Smuck Buck and I fished last year. I know you and Smuck went on a little hike out from the marina and found a few. I mainly fished around the marina so far this year and really haven't found any size yet. I really think the ice wasn't to safe on the lake to venture out to far this year yet. I have found nice size at mississinewa this year, mainly off the points on that lake.

[High Tide]

High Tide were you ever able to get out to the beach area that you, Smuck Buck and I fished last year. I know you and Smuck went on a little hike out from the marina and found a few. I mainly fished around the marina so far this year and really haven't found any size yet. I really think the ice wasn't to safe on the lake to venture out to far this year yet. I have found nice size at mississinewa this year, mainly off the points on that lake.

I fished the main lake for a day, and caught decent fish in the channel suspended, but the cove bite has been better.  The docks normally don't produce until the water is very murky. 

I never fished Miss or Sal, never really had to, but these reports of limits of 12-15" fish make it worth the drive.  I would feel more comfortable seeing at least 1 pic with a tape of a limit including multiple 15"ers and a nothing under 12", and maybe there was and I missed it.  I find it's was easy to type I got a limit of 12-15" fish then to actually do it.  After reading some of the reports on here this year, I'm assured I'm just a rookie or need more work at finding the proper location to catch all these hogs! Just a bad year for me I guess!! What was the average you were picking up at Miss?

[Jigmup]

They were being caught in 36 ft of water on a flat that was adjacent to the deepest water in the lake on Sunday. The deepest water was 45 ft, although this may not classify as the basin, it was the deepest flat in the lake and the crappies were suspending over it.

[HighPockets]

I'm like you High Tide I have to see to believe. We were ther last Thursday and ended up with 19 apiece and they ranged from 10 and 13 but we did a lot of sorting to keep those.

These are 2 of the 4 that I had that went 13.

[High Tide]

Looks like some very good fish... Congrats!

[perch on ice]

We catch quite a few in the basin of the lake we fish in central IN.  30 f.o.w.  We found them while on a white bass hunt.  The whites seem to stay a little tighter to the bottom and come through in large schools very often, so there isn't any need to move.  They come to you often enough.  Every now and then the flasher will light up with something suspended.  It's almost always a crappie.  The whites give pretty good action all day, but I get pumped when I see the blip at 15'.  I've got to think that chasing a roaming school of crappie through an open basin would be pretty tough.  Shoot me a PM if you want to go give the white bass/crappie combo a try.  Hoping the ice will firm back up over them soon.

[High Tide]

Thanks for the offer, perch on ice, hopefully we'll get the chance to trade notes. The location I'm referring to is loaded with white bass as well, so if I find them I'll know I'm close, and will give you the heads up.

[Steuben1]

Thanks for the offer, perch on ice, hopefully we'll get the chance to trade notes. The location I'm referring to is loaded with white bass as well, so if I find them I'll know I'm close, and will give you the heads up.

Chase em' High Tide, Chase em'!




Steuben1

[Hog Daddy]

Let's see.... oxygen, food, temperature, cover.  They are probably hiding out around all those bubblers where there is no ice, lol.

HHD

[RonSki]

RonSki, I fish it a ton on the open water, and have a 898 hummingbird (side scan), so nothing is a secret (and can detect bottom transitions with ease).  I fished it the day before it iced up, and hammered them on a main lake point, that has a ton of dropped stucture on it.  The ice allowed me one day to fish that very spot through the ice and not one fish was caught on the structure, but we did get a few on the channel that runs next to it.  Now it is open water again  , however, I will send you an PM when it's ready to go, to see if your available for a basin hunt.  There are definite monster crappie in this lake, so hopefully it will be worth our time.  Waxy, I heard about the very thing you're talking about on Wawa, and I heard they are normally hogs! 

 I have an 898 too so I know exactly how good it is. ( I LOVE that thing!) You definitely have an interesting puzzle there and would be fun to figure out. I'd DEFINITELY be in for a basin hunt when it's ready, especially if there's white bass involved too!!