Thread: Crappies were on, but wierd experiences with the bass

Weird experience on the water Tuesday 03/24/2015. Installed a new Minnkota V2 Ipilot trolling and took the toy out on a reservoir north of Sacramento. By the way, that Ipolit remote and its capability of GPS anchoring is sick! Anyhow, the wind was near to none, air temp was 80, and water temp average 51 with warmer temp of 53 in back channel. I found tons of small mouth fanning out nests in the back channel in about 4-5ft of muddy water. You could clearly see bubbles bubbling and water movement around the bubbles everywhere. Thought they were crappies so started single pole jigging directly into the bubbles. Almost every dip came out an 8-9” small mouth. If you have never seen it, it looks just like small gas leaks inside a pond or lake but with water swirls. Not exaggerating, between the three of us we caught at least 45 basses or more in a 400ft radius sand bar in an hour. Only a handful were actually 12" or more, the rest were 8-9". All were released but completely threw me off. None of them even seemed pregnant and very young so why the heck are they fanning nests? I was told crappies spawn before basses and crappies in NorCal usually do not spawn until late April.

After two hours of non-stop action, I got tired of bass fishing and chased after what I was there to do. Catch crappies for dinner. Using my Hummingbird side imaging, I found crappies scattered all over the flats in the middle of the lake. They were NOT bunched up, again, wierd. They SHOULD be bunched up staging to spawn. From 3pm-5pm, we slow trolled with 16ft cane poles (California spider Riggn style) with multiple different styles and colors of jigs. Mind you, we are limited to two cane poles so we hooked up three jigs per pole, legal. We even used live minnows and only caught 2 crappies suspended in 9ft. We know they are there, but they were being lockedjaws. Finally from 7pm-9pm, we landed 28 10' plus crappies bobber fishing back at the channel where we had found those basses. The crappies had moved to the back channel to feed on ghost minnows. We followed the minnows and that is how we located the feeding crappies. All males were jet black but no blood on anal fins so no nest fanning yet. Females were packed with eggs. Wierdest trip ever and so unpredictable.

We use a long handled wire screen net & lantern hanging over the side of the boat, and ease along the deep rocky shoreline at night & scoop them up. They will follow along with the light (& I've even had them follow along under my blacklights, too), but there's usually only a few big enough to use for every 25-50yds of bank you cover.
We see them in our lakes, jumping out of the water after small gnats or skipping across the water when fleeing a predator fish ... and so they've gotten the nickname of "skipjacks" more so than being called "ghost minnows". I've even heard them called "pin minnows", and I'm sure they have many other erroneous nicknames in other parts of the country.

Around here ... a three year old Crappie will be 8-11" long, depending on which lake they live in, and are capable of spawning by the age of three, regardless of length. Those fish in your picture are Black Crappie & the three darker colored ones would be the males ... and with the water temps being in the low 50's, I suspect they're just "getting ready" to start moving in to spawn. From your description of the trip, I'd say they were on a pre-spawn feeding pattern ... which should only get better as the water temps approach the upper 50deg range. When it starts to push the 60deg mark, they should be on the beds & serious about spawning.

... luck2ya, my friend


... cp