1weezer - please answer this for me

[pulplip fiction]

Oh yea, Matt, the reason the trip is during the spawn (most seasoned crappie fishermen know this) is the fish are HEAVIER!!! Simple logic...You wanna go sweat it out in July or freeze in January for smaller fish, fine by me.

Dr. Fishgood - someone (i'm thinking maybe he's a guide) made the above statement in a recent post. It may be simple logic - but I'm not sure it's exactly correct. Maybe it is. What is your opinion?

[fichere]

he is very right.

[gabowman]

I dont catch the numbers as you would during the spawn, but I generally average larger fish overall during the colder months.

[1weezer]

On Kentucky Lake, I catch my biggest fish of the year in November and December. You catch numbers in the spring and quality in the late fall and winter..
With that being said, Grenada is not like that. On Grenada, you will catch big and I mean big fish the last two weeks of March. I go down there every year and there has only been two times that I did not catch a three pound crappie on a trip to that lake.

[Jerry Blake]

I reckon on most any lake the big fish and the little fish eat pretty much every day. Of course it's easier to find the big fish during the spawn but they don't disappear the rest of the year.

Around here the fish are generally at their heaviest - weight vs. length - right before they spawn. Depending on how stable the weather, water levels and water clarity are they can start loosing a lot of weight real fast while they are spawning or even before they spawn if the spawn is delayed by up and down weather and water temps.

Last year they stayed in a fall pattern here - feeding like pigs and getting fatter and fatter - through about the middle of January and by mid February the females looked like they would pop they were so full of eggs and the males were at their prime.

Then we had some warm weather in early March - it never really got very cold - and they moved up like they really wanted to spawn. But the water temps hovered in the 50s through March and the lake level came up 7-feet on Greeson and 5-feet on Hamilton just as the males were getting their beds made. So they lost a lot of weight before they started spawning and even more during the spawn.

In years that we've had real unstable weather with a lot of lake level fluctuations and water temps going up and down as well as low shad populations I've seen some really thin crappie during the spawn.

Several of the longest and heaviest crappie ever brought over the side of my boat have been during the week of Thanksgiving for some odd reason. Maybe they eat like pigs that week just like we do.

[Wiskers]

I usually catch bigger fish in the cold months on the north end of Ky Lake like 1weezer said.

[ribit]

Cold weather crappie seem to taste better, not quite as spongy as summer crappie but they are good anytime.

[crap-king]

On High Rock we normally catch larger fish in the winter

[Darryl Morris]

Yep, the heaviest crappie I've ever caught was in January when the water was, if I remember correctly, 48 degrees and not during the spawn. I enjoy guiding during the spawn because it's easy to find fish and clients usually catch ample numbers. But, the bigger ones usually come during late Fall through the winter.

[barn dog]

Being from Wi. I couldnt wait till ice fishing season to pan fish they seemed healthier and tasted better coming out of the cold water. The crappi seemed to always run larger and thicker but when your using a 24" rod 4# test and fishing a 6" hole they all seem big. The best I did was a 15" through the ice.