BOBBERS
Much of the time you'll be fishing off
the bottom, and will use bobbers to keep your bait/lure in the 'kill
zone'. Use the best quality float you can afford. The new slip bobbers
are great for crappie fishing, and I urge you to learn the simple
procedures needed to properly fish them - not rocket science - and
they'll open a whole new fishin' dimension for you, and expand your
fishing savvy for other fishing opportunities too. If you are going to
choose bobbers, you want the most sensitive types you can handle.
The Thill 'Stealth', and 'Mini Stealth's' are excellent bobbers for
many applications - especially crappie. The long pencil floats
are fine, I've used the spring type, with the slit on the end where the
line passes through. The spring is to keep the line in place. The only
trouble is that they don't do a great job of staying at a given depth
because of the very light test lines that we are using.
LOCATING CRAPPIE!
As mentioned, crappie come into shallow
areas just after ice-out, as the water starts to warm. After the ice
has been out about a week to ten days, and the water had warmed a bit
more, these fine little denizens go on feeding frenzies, seemingly
making up for the long cold winter. Crappie will be eating many of the
insect life (types) and small minnows found in these 'warming'
areas.
Summer will find crappie hanging
out in open sections of water, and often in
other favored locations such as around bridge abutments, rock piles and
similar structure. They especially like 'hangin out' behind such places
when they are in a current, such as when they're in a river shed, rather
than a lake. They don't like too much current, and will use such places
to break the flow/current for them.
Crappie are not a deep water fish,
although they may be found suspended in relatively deep water, but up in
the top layer of water, usually not much deeper than 15 feet down.
As a simple rule of thumb, I've taken
more crappies in the five foot down range of water, in water that is
fifteen to twenty feet deep, than at all other depths. Once in a while
though, you may find them in deeper water, but I've found most often,
for excellent crappie fishin'', the water won't be too deep. To my
mind, more important is the depth that you will be catching them at,
often only a few feet under the surface. As mentioned, my favored
choice of depth to start fishing is five foot down, and
I'll vary this BOTH ways, when trying to locate crappie.
In a nutshell, find water that is about 20 feet deep, put on a slip
bobber rigged at about five foot down, using your lure/bait; if nothing
doing within ten minutes, change the depth at which the bait/lure is
at. Use Bear Paw connectors to attach other hook set-ups if need be.
This will enable you to test the various depth levels for crappie
where-a-bouts, quickly!
CATCHING CRAPPIE
Once you've arrived at your desired
location, bait up, cast out your rig with about five foot of line under
a bobber. Let this rig drift around. If nothing is happening, vary
your depth accordingly, up or down about a foot at a time. Try
various depths until you hit fish. I've caught crappie right on
top, with less than a foot of line under the bobber, as well as right
next to the bottom. As a rule of thumb - if you are picking up the
occasional smallmouth bass, or bottom feeder type fish - you're likely
fishing too deep. I have rarely (but have - none-the-less) caught
crappie right off the bottom, but only during the early spring, just
after ice-out.
The single most important tip
for catching crappie that I can give you is to very GENTLY - keep your
bait/lure moving - EVER SO SLIGHTLY. You'll
have the best chance of landing a crappie doing this - they bite so
incredibly softly, and if you allow your bait to just sit there, they'll
mouth and fool around with the bait/lure - and drive you nuts. If
you are lucky enough to catch a fish using the 'just sit there' method -
you'll be very lucky indeed; and likely the fish will have swallowed the
hook. BE SURE TO KEEP YOUR HOOKS NEEDLE SHARP - NOTHING ELSE WILL DO!
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