Sight Fishing For Crappie

[Jerry Blake]

We've had no significant rainfall in over a month and the shallow spawning coves where I've been fishing for over 20-years on Lake Greeson are clearer than I have ever seen them. So, a few times here lately, we've been "Sight Fishing For Crappie" - slowly moving the boat towards shallow cover and looking for crappie or swirls where males are apparently chasing each other or would be egg snatchers away from their beds.

When we spot a potential target we flip a jig or slip-float and minnow - not directly on top of the fish but just a few feet away and BAM! We've seen several crappie turn and charge the minnow as soon as the float hits the water. These fish are in less than two feet of water and we're fishing about a foot deep. With Polarized glasses they are clearly visible if we approach with the sun at our backs. It's a bit different tactic than I've every used before but it's a lot of fun. The males are getting really black so they are easy to spot.

Our surface temps are just now holding in the lower 60s and by the appearance of the eggs in the fish we're cleaning they are just starting to spawn here.

Some of these fish were caught by "Sight Fishing" last Tuesday afternoon:

And today:

It's a great time of year to be on the water in Arkansas!

[NIMROD]

Great catch there Jerry! The fish are starting to show up on the banks here some. This wind is a killer and this jig fishing is tough. Most of my fish are females ,but I'm fishing out on the drops and humps.. I can't remember seeing Crappie on the beds in years. They really have to be shallow as Nimrod water is so colored. Nothing like sight fishing whether it's Crappie or Bass.

[camofish]

All sounds great and I can't wait for the warming temps to melt my ice and I can get out there after the crappies. :D I've too in the past can get right up on them and sight fish them, it is great. I've jigged them up in a few feet of water right under the boat before. great report and keep'm coming, love to see those large boards of crappies. WTG

[GRIZZ]

Oh man - I LOVE doing that. We often have clear water here when the fish are spawning and I can go to several places on the lake and see the schools of crappies in the shallows and spawning activities. I like to use hair jigs or micro grubs or tubes with really light heads. I cast an ultralight over them and very slowly pull the hair jig across the crappies and watch em hit it. Thats the best. I actually have dreams of doing just that - lol.

One thing I wish some smart tackle MFG would make is a 1/64 jighead on a larger size fine wire jig hook for really slow clear water presentations like I mentioned above, maybe with a really light alloy so the head isn't too small.

[skiptomylu]

Kind of what I have been doing, but I have been moving around in shallow water with my troll motor and holding out my 10' pole with just enough line that I can handle it with out reeling and sometime just flipping it closer to the shore. Some I found have just come up and hit it as I pull it along without seeing them and some I can see come up and hit my jig. This is really cool stuff to do. After I pass an area they are in I usually back off a little and cast in reeling very slow using a shorter rod.

When I find them they ususlly are in a relative small area and I can get 25-30 out of a space that is say 30'X30" or so.

[fiddlefarter]

We gonna be doing that here too if it don't rain soon.

[Mo'nBack]

Jerry; That's neat! I've seen their fins out of the water before, but never seen any of our water clear enough to see the whole fish. We could fill our bathtub with our well water, put crappie in it, and still couldn't see them or the bottom!! Good job on finding them different ways!

[FisherMike]

Some day,,,,,,Jerry,,,,,, some day. Maybe I'll catch about 1/4 of those up here in the clear waters.

Thank you for the post though. I think maybe I did learn something.

[Jerry Blake]

I had a crew of four this morning so we fished staging beds in 15 to 25-feet of water and caught a good mess of mostly white female crappie on minnows and jigs:

Of course the whole morning I was thinking about the fish in the shallows and since I had the afternoon off (first in a while and last for a while) I had to go check them out. I caught 8 really dark males in short order before they started pushing my jig around instead of biting it so I spent some time watching them on their beds and trying to get some pictures.

I guess I need a camera with a Polarized lens because none of the pictures turned out - too much glare. I was trying to get a picture of a crappie on a bed. The bed was nothing more than an area about 18-inches across where the silt and sediment had been fanned off the bottom, which was covered with very short grass or weeds maybe an inch or two thick. I had pitched a jig into the opening in some dead buck brush before I saw the bed or the crappie that was guarding it. I assume it was a male crappie but it wasn't nearly as dark as the ones I'd caught.

The crappie had just pushed my jig sideways without striking it a couple times so I moved in closer to check it out. The fish swam away when I got real close but after the boat stopped moving and I held still it came back over the bed again and watched me watching him. I put my jig in front of it but the fish was more concerned about me than the jig in it's bed.

I just love them little critters!

[bobberwatcher]

I can't wait till CC!