Fishing for crappie during the summer can be an excellent way to teach young anglers how to fish and a great way to fill a cooler full of fish. Crappie are supposed to be excellent tasting and fight fairly well for their size. They often travel in large schools and are active during the warm summer months, making targeting them fairly easy. Get some light fishing gear and go after these awesome fish with these tips.
Crappie grow quite large, compared to their sunfish relatives. Both white and black crappie can easily reach over a foot in length, and its not uncommon to catch larger ones. They have considerably larger mouths than bluegill, pumpkinseed and redear sunfish. Thus, crappie often are a little more aggressive than sunfish and will attack larger lures. Still, many dedicated crappie anglers will use smaller lures than what is typically used for largemouth bass fishing.
While crappie can pull pretty good, don’t go overkill with the gear for them. A small rod, preferably matched with a spinning reel, is perfect. Load the reel with 4-8lb test line, I think 6lb is perfect. Monofilament is the cheapest to buy and use, but some anglers really like fluorocarbon for light gear and in heavily pressured lakes.
One of my best memories crappie fishing is my first crappie I caught. I was fishing a pond with a friend and was catching small bass, but no crappie. The guy I was fishing with kept telling me about the huge crappie he had succssfully caught in the pond, so I really wanted one for myself. None would bite the plastic Berkely Gulp Minnow I was using, nor would they hit the micro crankbait I tried. Finally, I tied on a small jighead and tipped it with a tiny Zoom Fluke minnow. On my first or second cast, a large fish hit my lure, bending my micro rod into the water. I fought him for several intense seconds, and finally got him to the shore. It was an enormous crappie! I quickly took a picture posing with this sweet fish, than let it go back into the pond.
Small jigs are probably the best way to catch crappie. You can buy large packs of leadhead jigs without trailers for quite cheap in bulk at Wal-Mart or major tackle shops like Sportsmans Wharehouse. Buy a few different packs of grubs, worms and other plastic imitation lures to put on the jig. Some anglers like fishing for crappie with a jig and bobber rig, but I usually do not a bobber. Once you catch your first crappie out of a fishing spot, keep casting to the same and surrounding area. Crappie have the tendency to travel in schools, so it is often likely you will catch more than one in a given spot.
Crappie sometimes frequent deep water, but often you can find them near thick cover. If you can find a combination of deep water, near the shore, with abundant fallen logs as cover, definitely stick around and fish it. Also, in some waters anglers will sink Christmas trees and brush piles to provide the fish with cover and thus attract them to an area. If you can find out where these spots are, fish them as well. Crappie are a great fish to catch, bring a friend and catch a load of them this summer!
