At my favorite local lake there is some rip rap where spin fishermen regularly catch quite a few crappies. I’d go down there and just get a few now & then. Until today I was really puzzled by this; why should they catch so many crappies while I just get a few. It turned out the answer was right in front of me all the time if I only would have had the wit to see it. They usually fish 5 feet or more down. My main error was I wasn’t getting my fly down. Today I fished a small clouser on some type II full sink line with much better results than usual.
Now watch the fish come up and I’ll be fishing below them :roll:
Most crappie caught on artificials are caught on jigging poles with…duh…jigs.
Just try and replicate with your flies what a jig would accomplish (depth and jiggling movement) and you will have much greater success.
The biggest problem for fly fishers is that most crappie hang around brush cover making casting to them very perilous.
I agree with Coach Bob. Last summer I tried placing my fly at the desired depth under an indicator (AKA bobber) and throwing out past the brush, then retrieving the fly until it was close to the brush and then just let it sit there without moving or twiching it. It seemed that after a short while the indicator would slowly disappear and a flip of the line resulted in a hooked crappie.
Tim
What Panman said. I fish a size 4 or 6 maribou bead head under a strike indicator almost motionless and usually outfish a jig angler and at times even out fishes minnows. The depth is critical.
Thanks for all the replies and good tips about how to catch crappie.
I did some research into the feeding habits of crappies tonight & was surprised at how much of their diet is composed of little tiny almost microscopic prey items. The next biggest group was various insects and the final group was minnows. I had always supposed they ate mostly fish but, in thinking about what I found, they just did the sensible thing by eating more of what’s most abundant and easiest to catch. When they got bigger they tended to eat more of the bigger items but still chowed down on tiny stuff a lot.
You nailed it there! My best pattern this year was a #8 nymph and did way better than my streamers, clousers & buggers. Of course the real test will be next season…
Agree with Atticafish. Some of my best days was with a #10 Colorado Caddis.
Tim
I fish unweighted flies, taking a long time to let them drop and retrieve them very slowly.
Rick
When I was a kid my favorite fishing hole was full of crappie but you had to get the jig way down deep. We finally had it down to a science. We cast at a certain spot counted to 16 and retrieved very slowly. If you can figure out how long to let your fly drop, you can catch alot of fish.
hNt
Same here. Counting was the trick. The number that you had to count to varied throughout the season, but once you caught one, you could bet you were going to catch a bunch more if you counted to the same number.
I must have fished for crappie 200 days a year back then, and always caught crappie. I didn’t use a jig, though. A plain, feather wing streamer and a slow sinking line. Worked every time.
I have a favorite crappie fishing spot which is a channel between two parts of a lake (the lake is really a dammed-up river and the channel is that part of the old river course) and spring is usually the best time when they are in the shallows spawning. During this time I’ve had the best results using small streamers and the best of the lot has been the black-nosed dace.
After crappies leave the shallows they are harder to find and to catch, and then I’ve had to go deeper for them and here the nymphs have proven better.
Dale
This is a really good thread. You KNOW this question will come back up in the future. Is there a way to keep this from dropping into oblivion?
Before they drained my favorite lake and rebuilt the levee I mainly focused on bream but did well with the crappie around a brush pile using what I call a chrome wooly bugger. White marabou tail, leave the quill to give the body a little bulk and wrap with something shiny and then palmer a hackle, I used grizzly but white would probably work. Weight it to suit yourself.
Last night I again went out to fish crappies & bluegills and found they were on top. The weather has been unusually warm for the past several days and I’ve been noticing a few bugs were coming out. Last night was dead calm & there were schools of small crappie & bluegill feeding right on top scooping up whatever it was that they were eating. I also saw some much larger rises and swirls like a large fish either rushed to the surface to nail a baitfish or a large fish was cruising just below the surface and spooked. Probably some larger fish or an unusually aggressive small fish rose to take a tasty bug made some of the rings and swirls too.
The deep pattern that I was fishing didn’t work.
I’m always amazed at how finely tuned fish are to their environment but then it’s a matter of life or death to them & they’ve had millions of years to get really, really good at it.
Depth is critical, as others have stated, but retrieve speed is too. I’ve found that, sometimes, you can’t GO too slow. Crappie/perch (two of my favorite fish) that live in places with lots of food, rarely chase anything down. They are curious fish too, as likely to hit something they’ve never seen as they are a familiar food item. Every fly you have that works for crappie~tie them weighted and unweighted. I’ve caught more crappie on #6, unweighted, chartreuse crystal buggers than any other fly. That said, I’ve outfished bait guys 10-1 using bead-headed princes too! Always have your trout flies with you when crappie fishing!!!
Here is a nice slab from this past spring;
This guy hit that bugger less than a second after it hit the water! (note the “secret” fly in the hook keeper! lol)
I have caught a ton of them between sunset and dark on topwater (beetles and gurgle pops), and bouncing leeches along riprap.
Tuesday afternoon a friend and self went to Lake Sonoma and paddled the canoe around the marina there. It was one of those “glass calm” afternoons with advancing storm front clouds…but not cold.
I tried bobbering several nymphs around with very poor success, though a bit was realized. Don tossed a black bass bug for a bit and a clouser for a bit with absolutely no success…though he did have a few follows.
Finally I tried a faster retrieve which kept the bugs high in the column and this proved to be better…but not IT.
Took off the bobber and used our favorite “search” pattern…a #10 dark (black) wollybugger in tandem with a #10 or #12 surf candie. Wala!!! For an hour before we had to leave, we caught MANY small to medium crappie, bluegill, and the occasional small LM…sometimes both of us with doubles at the same time.
I did not take time to re-rig with the bobber and bugs to test’em out, so we will never know …
Also we wondered if it was the combination of bugs, the presentation of bugs (faster and higher), or if it was the advancing cloud cover that turned these little guys on.
Too many variables for this old EYEtalian, so we’ll just have to go fish’em again and see what happens.
…lee s.
Very slow retrieve will get 'em. That way you have a slight tension on the line and you can tell when they take the fly.
Had good luck with wooley buggers on them.
I went back to my favorite crappie spot. The day was cloudy, windy and pretty cool. Again using type II sinking line on my 4 wt in combination with a small clouser caught them though not as fast as a hardware fisherman using minnow suspended 5 ft below a bobber. In addition he was catching some bass up to about 14 inches long while I got none of the bass. I think my main problem was slack created in the line when the wind blew and made a big bow in it and my non-straight casts.
Still working on perfecting my fly fishing skills and thanks to everyone for all the good tips.
Keep at it. Crappie are a great way to learn.