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Thread: Looking for some Crappie advice (sic)

  1. #21
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    Klamath Falls, Oregon, USA
    Posts
    1,783

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    Waskeyc: I would like to suggest you go to the home page and type in Crappie Flies in the search feature. Then click enter and you will be directed to over 500 entries pertaining to your search. Many of them are from a very knowledgeable FAOL member, Rick Z.

    Good Luck

    Tim

  2. #22
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    913 Jackson Lake Rd, Chatsworth, Ga. 30705 (423) 438-1060
    Posts
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    The best fly I have ever used for crappie is Al Campbells Crappie Candy. It's in the Fly Of The Week Archives. Just type it in the search box. The next best one I have used is the Electric Chicken:

    ElectricChicken.jpg

    After this, any smaller clouser, streamer or bugger will work. I'd recommend chatruese, and white for daytime use, and black for nightime. Use brighter colors in stained, or darker waters, and darker colors in clearer water. If you are catching a lot of small ones, move a little deeper.

    During pre-spawn, look for schools of staging crappie in structure that is close to suitable spawning areas (flat shallows with nearby cover). Use a sink tip to fish in about 7-15 feet of water. During the spawn, just throw anything at them in shallow flats. It doesn't really matter what. Fish anywhere from 6" to 4 feet deep.

    After the spawn....fish for something else. Crappie are moody and suspend, anywhere, without regard for structure, the thermocline or anything else. They can be anywhere, from 10' to 100' deep. They will refuse to hit anything unless it is almost placed in their mouths. Summer crappie are tough. In fall, look for them in 5-15' of water around structure. They bite actively, stoking up for the winter. In winter, they will hold in 15-20' of water, and hit very light and slow. This is not a good time for fly fishing, as far as crappie are concerned.

  3. #23
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Virginia Piedmont
    Posts
    140

    Default Crappie Excursion Report

    I went to my Dad's pond over the weekend, since we were celebrating his birthday. I had three of my kids with me, plus my brother and his 2 year old son on Saturday. Sunday, it was just me and my kids, the oldest of which is 7. We fished about an hour each day. Both days were overcast, with a thunderstorm chasing us away on Saturday, and there were scattered showers during the afternoon on Sunday, but it was dry while we were out.

    I was using a small (#12?) bead-head nymph on my 8' 5/6 wt. The others were using garden worms and plastic grubs on jigs with spin-casting rods. No casting was necessary, the fish were right along the bank, mostly under floating dead aquatic vegetation from last season. I don't know whether this was pre-spawn, mid-spawn, or post-spawn, but I do know that pond is seriously overrun with crappie. Combining our catches, we landed 28 fish on Saturday and 21 on Sunday, most of which fell to my nymph. Only 2 or 3 were over 6" long and most were about 4" or 5".

    The technique that seemed to work best was to let the nymph pendulum out past the matted floating grass and let it sink on a semi-tight line. My rod was more a jig-pole than a fly rod. If no take on the initial drop, slowly jig it up and down while moving it along the bank. If slack is allowed to develop in the line, the fish can get free when they bite, and bites will be difficult to detect. With tension in the line, a hookset is much more reliable. Fish would not pick the nymph up off the bottom, but would bite it while it was falling. They were mostly 1'-2' below the surface. Didn't try topwaters, but the others didn't have much success because their hooks were too big for the little fish. The fish seemed to be just a bit bigger slightly farther from the bank, and slightly deeper, but all of these fish were stunted.

    I did fillet most of the fish from Saturday and everyone got a bite, but that was way too much effort for such a small amount of meat.

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Feb 2000
    Location
    Pacific
    Posts
    1,351

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    Congrats on working out the solution for your situation!

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