Secrets to Shallow Water Crappie by John E. Phillips
Day 2: Locate Warm Water Discharges to Catch Crappie in Shallow Water
Editor’s Note: All crappie anglers know that during the spring, crappie move into shallow-water bays to spawn. Spawning activity generally takes place in extremely-shallow bays and creeks with plenty of brush in them. However, most crappie fishermen fish these regions from boats and fish the outer edges of the cover – usually the deepest part of the water.
 To catch the spawners in shallow water, you need to pinpoint places where warm water enters a lake or a reservoir. Much like bird dogs when they pick-up the scent of the quail, a crappie that finds warm water, often only a degree or two warmer than the lake’s water, usually will follow that warm water to its source and attempt to spawn first where it finds the warmest water. That’s why I recommend using a water-temperature gauge when searching for early spawners in shallow water.
 When you can pinpoint warm-water discharges flowing into cold-water lakes in the springtime, you often can catch really-big crappie. While fishing one spring in Georgia where I once lived, I discovered a small, warm-water creek that fed into Lake Weiss on the Georgia/Alabama border. As I drove over a bridge that crossed the creek, I saw a small peninsula jetting out into the creek that had an eddy pool behind the peninsula.  Because I had my crappie rod in the back of the car and about an hour of unscheduled time, I decided to test that eddy pool. I put a slip bobber about 14-inches up the line and tied a 1/16-ounce chartreuse crappie jig below the bobber. I cast the bobber and the jig upstream and let the current wash my bait into the eddy hole. Just as the bobber moved over into the eddy pool, it vanished from sight. I fought a 2-1/2-pound crappie to the boat. Using this technique, in 1-1/2 hours, I caught a limit of crappie. Every year after that in the spring while the water on the lake was too cold for the crappie to spawn, I’d go to that little warm-water discharge creek and use this tactic to fill my cooler with big slab crappie.  The fishing only lasted for about 2 weeks each year, but during those 2 weeks, I’d catch more and bigger crappie than at any other time of the year.
|
