Crappie biting

catman529 · Mar 4, 2012

Fished a local city pond for less than 2 hours today and caught a handful of white crappie... not a huge amount but sure beats getting skunked. They liked the big bite baits I got for 99 cents at academy rigged on a trout magnet jig head fished about 2.5 feet under a float. Wind had the water a bit choppy, just enough to let the lure jig itself and the fish loved it.

Only problem is that park lake is catch-and-release only and with good reason... it's filled with city effluent water. Have yet to find a consistent crappie hole in the harpeth river. Basically I need a good crappie hole to take some home from. If I go out trolling around on old hickory, I guess I should hit the bushes and trees as the water warms this spring?

AllOutdoors · Mar 4, 2012

Yeah as the water warms they will move shallow. Trees and bushes will be good but you can also probably find stick ups (crappie hides) out in the bays. Here on kY Lake the crappie are moving up. Monday when I fished water temp was 54 degrees. Thursday I fished and water temp was 64 degrees.Thursday, Out of a limit of crappie, the best ones came in 2-3 ft of water. Many had just moved in from deeper water. My best 4 averaged 16 inches long. I caught several big males too. So you better get out there and get after them....cause....I don't know about Old Hickory, but the crappie thing is taking off on KY lake.

B.D. · Mar 4, 2012

catman529 said:
it's filled with city effluent water.

LOL - wrong type of crappie hole!!!

bd

catman529 · Mar 5, 2012

B.D. said:
catman529 said:

it's filled with city effluent water.

Click to expand...

LOL - wrong type of crappie hole!!!

bd

it was stocked with bluegill, channel cats, grass carp, possibly redear, can't remember if there was anything else, 3 years ago. Then when the river flooded in 2010 it filled the lake with crappie, largemouth, bullheads and gizzard shad along with the stocked fish. Now with schools of 2-3" gizzard shad, all the fish are getting fat. It's a great pond to fish at times. My buddy caught a 6 lb largemouth out there a few weeks ago... caught him on a fragment of a nightcrawler. I'm waiting for the grass carp to get bigger as they are under 10 lbs and waiting for my turn to catch a real big bass or big slab out of there. Just can't take any fish home...

bowriter · Mar 5, 2012

My two crappie buddies have been catching crappie for two months on OH. They say they catch them from 4-20 feet deep depending on what brush pile they are fishing. They have been catching a lot but have to catch 5 to get one to measure.

They only fish about 4-5 hours and usually have 10-12 really good keepers. One day they had a limit of sure enough slabs and could not explain it. They fish a chart./red tube on a 1/16 head under a cork.

AllOutdoors · Mar 5, 2012

bowriter said:
My two crappie buddies have been catching crappie for two months on OH. They say they catch them from 4-20 feet deep depending on what brush pile they are fishing. They have been catching a lot but have to catch 5 to get one to measure.

They only fish about 4-5 hours and usually have 10-12 really good keepers. One day they had a limit of sure enough slabs and could not explain it. They fish a chart./red tube on a 1/16 head under a cork.

Your friends are exactly right on catching 4-5 little ones for a keeper. Same here on KY Lake. It's fun the first hour, then gets to be aggravating. I start upsizing my bait til the little ones stop biting. Im sure i might miss some keepers with such a large bait, but I do get more (bait time in the water) due to the fact I'm not removing so many short fish. 3.5 inch tube seemed to be the trick the other day....just let em take it like a minnow.

catman529 · Mar 5, 2012

Maybe I need to get some bigger jigs for the lake... however the pond I was fishing I caught 13" crappie on a jig about 1.5" long on a 1/64 oz jig head under a float.