Fish Black Nights to catch White Crappie This Summer
Day 5: Warning: Summer’s Nighttime Crappie Fishing Can Be Addictive
Editor’s Note: The night was muggy. The big, thick, mushroom-shaped clouds allowed the moon only an occasional glimpse of our boat out in the middle of a lake near my home. Large swarms of gnats, mosquitoes and sometimes a mayfly circled the white beam from the Coleman lantern being cast into the dark water below. Often the heat from the lantern toasted the wings of the bugs, which were inhaled by swarms of shad as soon as they hit the surface of the water. We’d been fishing for 3 hours and only caught two or three small, white crappie. “Sometimes the papermouths don’t turn-on until 1:00 am or 2:00 am,” a fishing buddy of mine explained. “But if and when the crappie start biting, we’ll take plenty of good-sized crappie. The fishing will be so fast and furious that we can catch two crappie at a time.” At 2:48:30 am, large numbers of slab-sized crappie began to school-up under the light. We caught the crappie from 2-feet off the bottom to 2 inches from the surface in the 15-foot-deep water. Until the sun came-up, the fishing was non-stop. I held the record for the most crappie caught on one minnow when I put my fifth crappie in the boat and finally retired the bait. Four of us kept 150 crappie that weighed from 1/2- to 2-1/2-pounds each. On most productive crappie lakes, trips like this will occur frequently across the United States throughout the summer months.
 Another interesting feature about night crappie fishing is several different schools may come under the lights at various times of the night. Often you may fish for 3 or 4 hours without ever getting a bite and then start catching crappie on every rod as fast as you can get baits in the water for 45 minutes to an hour. Another hour to 1-1/2-hours may pass without getting a bite. Then as quickly as the catching has stopped, it may begin again and often last for only 5 to 15 minutes or as long as 3 or 4 hours.  One reason I enjoy crappie fishing at night in the summertime is it doesn’t interfere with any of my daytime activities. I can fish in the afternoon after work or all night Friday, all day Saturday and still have Sunday to clean fish and recover. If you’ve never given nighttime crappie fishing a try, do it this summer. But I must warn you, nighttime crappie fishing is one of the most-addictive forms of fishing I know. Crappie fishing at night is cool, relaxing, usually rewarding and an ideal way to spend quality time with friends and family away from the rest of the world. As for me, I’m hooked on catching white crappie while fishing black nights.
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