Thread: My summer poor on South end of Rayburn.

Originally Posted by wes75951

Thanks for the encouragement. I bass and striper fished on Toledo Bend in the 70's and 80's when I lived in the Indian Mounds area. Got involved in family and other things and didn't fish for 30+ years. Now semi-retired pastor with time to fish, I bought a boat last summer. Wanted to learn crappie fishing in the hope of having fish to share with others. I'll keep working to figure it out. Thanks for help.

I don't know the rules over on Rayburn as far as putting out your own brush plies, but that is what I would so here. I have not the last few years as it's a lot of work, but worth is every time I have! I still know where some we put in that will not go away as they are not wood and are big so hoping they will pay off next summer for me. I can only talk about Toledo Bend as I have not crappie fished on Rayburn since it first opened and there were still tons of trees you could go get lost in, lol! So again all my info is for here and should also work there! Lets start in Spring okay?
You have to really be on top of finding them when they first come in and that can be anywhere from Early Feb to March sometime. It will depend on what kind of weather we have in winter which I do not fish! You really want to zone in on the beginning because the first week to two it will be all big males. we found them in 2013 Feb Super Bowl Sunday! The weather had been warm, like in the 70's about all the week before and my neighbor wanted to go cast some White spinner baits for bass and I wanted to try crappie due to that weather. So he was going to do that and if I caught a crappie he was going to change over to crappie. As soon as we stopped and I made a few cast and caught a nice crappie. So we just changed over to long line trolling and for us that is one rod in hand and trolling motor pulling at .4 to .8 MPH and look for a crappie. When we catch one note right away what depth of water the boat was in, then stay on that contour and go back and forth catching crappie. We didn't go out until about 8 AM and quit for lunch and started back about 2:30 and quit for the day at 5 PM. We had 50 of the nicest crappie you have ever seen IMHO! Will post a pic here below. Every time out just locate the depth they are at for that day and get after them. We are pulling 1/32 Oz Roadrunners and Ponies and that bait never gets very deep and they will come up and get it. Have caught crappie like that on the edge of Hydrilla in water as deep as 20'!
Then summer is coming and they have got out of the 6' to 7' water which is were we mostly find them, but did have one year as soon as they came to the bank the SRA dropped the water 2' in two weeks. This moved them out to 9 1/2' water and they stayed there for the rest of that spring. They will move so more is at 10' to 12' for a few days and then a little deeper, then out to the brush piles in 20' to 25' and later even deeper water at times. This is when you need brush piles to fish and they should have been put in around April to May and by the end of may they will hold fish! Then Fall will just depend on finding them in what depth of water and once you ahem that it reduces how much looking you have to do! It's all about water depth IMHO! Fall I want some Hydrilla and then find some fish in it and even use the fish ID to do that.

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