Crappies

[scottwebster]

Anyone finding any crappies yet? Heading up tomorrow morning hoping to catch some. I am guessing right now they are still in there winter areas?

[Ernie1]

I fished with a friend quite a bit over the last four days and found crappies all the way from twenty feet to two feet and didn't find any big numbers of fish in any one place. We did find a few crappies over ten inches in a few bays in around eight feet of water but not in large numbers. Hope this helps a little.

[Ty Sennett]

There are thousands of crappie up shallow. We caught quite a few yesterday. One thing we found out is that if you used a bobber of any kind you couldn't catch big numbers of fish. We used crappie minnows on a bare hook and just kind of lobbed it out there. The largest ones we caught were on crankbaits with a rip/pause action. More than half of the ones we kept were on that crankbaits. The larger ones were 11 to 12 1/2 inches. Make sure to use a flourocarbon leader in the 3 to 4 pound range. Vannish works great. It's surprising how important that is right now. If you don't believe me have one guy use flouro and the other just straight tied and see who catches more. I learned that the hard way one day with friends.

[scottwebster]

You are right about there being thousands in the shallows. We are doing pretty good. All are 10-11.5 inches. And I have flourocarbon line on all my spinning rigs. It's funny you said that because Neil was struggling until I put flourocarbon on his!

[andracke]

Scott, I will be up next weekend. Hopefully they are still active. Are you using minnows?

[scottwebster]

We are not using minnows only jigs with plastics. We caught a ton this evening. We kept. 15 this morning to have for lunch and released all the others the rest of the day. Fun just catching them. Hope you find them next weekend.