Thread: Fall Crappie question

Hi Everyone.
I'm relatively new to Southern Illinois (spent most of my life north of Seattle) and don't seem to be able to figure out how to catch Crappie. I've picked up some Cottonmouth jigs, but don't know how to use them. Minnows seemed to work fairly well in the spring in the shallow lake grass and around old fallen tree branches, but now I just seem to spend my time drowning minnows. I live fairly close to Crab Orchard Lake and would greatly appreciate any advice from the Crappie community with regards to technique, places to try, etc.
Thanks for any advice.
Floater

Floater- welcome to the site! If you primarily fish crab, make sure to ask CarpPoop on the scoop there. He is the pro it seems on that like, always catchin nice fish and knows the lake well! Hope you get on them soon!

Welcome to the site. I have drowned plenty of minnows as well. I actually quit using them it got too expensive for me. Now I just toss various types of Jigs in the water and bounce them around with a PowerBait crappie nibble on them. Bobby Garlands "baby shad" work for me Key Lime Pie color and also any tube jig that has some chartreuse or lime green in it.

Since you are near crab pay attention to Carppoops posts on this site. He has been slaying them on crab lately

If ya gotta boat the place to be is near the hwy 154 big muddy bridge on rend. That is the middle brdg. Bite is from daylight to 0930. Chart/wht jigs 10 to 15'. No boat? No problem. Park on east side of brdg, walk down and cast same jigs, countdown to depth, slow retrieve. You will still catch a limit, just gotta haul em up the hill.
Our first fish yesterday was a bit over 2# and we had two limits by 0805.
DNR is gonna check ya, best be able to read a tape measure and count to 25.

Welcome to the boards Floater...from Georgia.

Welcome to the site.
If you go to Rend fish the bridge or find some good structure. If you want to go to Crab then Jeff, AKA CarpPoop is the guy to talk to on here.

CX.

You guys give me way too much credit..you bought the right kind of jigs. I use strictly white...pearl...or chartreuce....or any combination of the 3. A Nibble helps. Jig fishing is easy there....its spending some time finding stucture that takes a little time. Once you find some brush then you will get the hang of it. Look in the 8-10 foot ranges unless the water is below 45. Then look for spots that are 10-12. Big crappie are rarely caught deeper than 12 feet on Crab. I tie 2 jigs on at a time using loop knots about 20 inches apart. Use two 1/8th oz heads or else youll be dragging them rather than keeping them verticle. Dont over work the jigs. Hold them still and shake them every 5 sec. or so. 90% of the fish will hit the bottom jig. I only place a nibble on the bottom jig which may explain this. I found putting a nibble on both is a pain as its more time consuming keeping both of them baited. The top jig is for weight as much as anything anyway. It allows you to fish a smaller jig deeper which i think helps. A graph up on your nose transducer is almost a must so u can be sure you are always over brush (or a drop off, concrete, etc). You also need marker bouys to reference where you need to drop the jigs. Keep them just above the structure and remember to be subtle with their action....rather than actually jig them up and down. I hope this gets you going in the right direction. Good fishin.

Hi everyone.
Thank you so much for the welcome and the advice.
Hopefully, there will be a day this week I can get out and give this new information a try. I've got a new transducer coming, that should help me locate brush, drop-offs, etc.
Thank you again and I'll give a report once I hit the water again, hopefully this week.
Floater