Gabbys Fishing Fever

In the spring time when the crappie come up shallow they are fairly easy to catch. A lot of people really look forward  to this time of year because the crappie are aggressive and will hit a bait and you can catch a lot of numbers of crappie. But as the mild spring time air and water temps give way to the warmer summer weather their is a big change in the crappies feeding and in the depth of water at which the crappie will stay in. As the water starts to warm from the high 50's and move into the 70 and 80 degree range. Several things start to happen that effects the crappie and a lot of other fish. The bait fish head into the deeper water and they are followed by fish like the crappie and the bass. Also the shallow water that when  it was cooler had good oxygen levels now because of the very warm water temps has a very low oxygen content and this stresses the fish and they will not stay in these types of areas and will move to the deeper cooler water areas. The water has more cooler and better oxygen levels and the crappie will hold on these deeper areas till the fall and early winter weather cools the shallows down once more. A lot of fisherman think that when they hear of fish being deep they think you mean 30 or 40 feet deep. this is not always the case. Deeper can mean  going from a 5 foot deep brush pile to moving out to to edge of a point and fishing a 12 foot deep lay down tree top. In most cases the best crappie fishing done during this time of year is done by night fishing. During the day while the lake is active with speed boats and skiers and jet skies the crappie will not feed much but will hold on areas like a channel drop or on a deeper water flat edge or even on cover on the deep side of a main lake point. After the day turns to night and the lake settles down the crappie will start to move in groups into the deeper heaver cover and then scatter into the cover in a little shallower water. This is when the crappie angler needs to be on these types of areas. Look for places that has deep water wood or weed or rock cover. This where a good fish finder is very helpful, watch for signs of cover on or close to the bottom. On most fish finders a school of crappie holding on a piece of cover will look like several fish in a tight group. When you find a area like this drop your bait down so it will be directly over top of the school. If you see fish on the finder holding at 15 feet then try to keep your bait about 13 or so feet. the crappie will almost always go up to hit a bait instead of down. One reason being that the crappie has its eyes located in the top part of its head so it sees a bait better up then down. As for baits for crappie a minnow is a top bait. And so is the tube bait the small colored jigs and doll flies. The crappie can be very color selective at times so you may have to change colors of your baits during your trip to stay on the fish. You can use a floater or not while your crappie fishing. Myself I prefer to use a floater because It gives me the ability to change depth of my bait by simply moving the floater up or down the line. And crappie will change depths most of the time during the night. Also the floater lets me see the lightest of strikes that I would miss with the line straight down. And by using the floater you can get your bait into the heavy cover and back out easier than if you tried to just pull it out. When your fishing at a certain depth and the action slows the best thing I have found to do is first go a little deeper or shallow or switch baits or colors. Night time crappie fishing is one of my all time favorite ways to fish and if you give these tips a try it will be one of yours to. If you would like to contact me with a fishing question or any thing fishy contact me at gabbysfishingfever@yahoo.com