HOW TO FIND CRAPPIE ON A NEW LAKE

Do Aerial Reconnaissance

EDITOR'S NOTE: With the strategies you'll learn this week, you can develop a game plan on how to fish a new lake. With this information, a large number of potential crappie hotspots will come to mind. However, depending on the time of year you plan to fish, you also must consider where the crappie will be along their seasonal migration routes.

After studying the lake map and predetermining sites you want to fish, you also can find the most productive places for crappie fishing inexpensively in the shortest time by flying over the lake and using a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. At different times, I use either of GPS machines from Eagle, Magellan or Garmin. Any of them will serve your GPS fishing needs well. Shaw Grigsby of Gainesville, Florida, one of the nation's top money winners on the B.A.S.S. fishing circuit, taught me to use my GPS. "John, as you fly over the lake, utilize your GPS receiver to mark underwater cover, ledges and drop-offs you won't be able to see from your boat," Grigsby instructed. "When you pass over stumps rows, standing timber, deep drop-offs and any other area you want to fish, punch the QUICK-SAVE button on your GPS receiver to log the spot as a waypoint. Then when you get in your boat, you can find the places you've logged as waypoints on your GPS receiver."

Also by doing aerial reconnaissance, you can discover where most bank-bound crappie fishermen fish. You'll see their boats tied up or anchored to the visible cover along the bank. Mark these crappie hotspots as waypoints with your GPS receiver too. Aerial reconnaissance allows you to spot sand bars or mud flats that cut off creeks and sloughs from the main river. A promising creek will appear to have deep water and standing timber or brush in it from the air that most anglers will not see because of the mud flat or the sandbar at its mouth.

As John Holley of Linden, Alabama, an avid crappie fisherman and college friend of mine, always told me, "If you pull, push or run your boat across the mud flat or sand bar to enter the creek, you may find more and bigger crappie there than in any other section of the lake. I target any bay, creek or pocket that appears to have deep-enough water to hold crappie and yet remains inaccessible to most anglers. I believe these spots have had the least amount of crappie fishing pressure."

As you mark a waypoint on your GPS receiver, take note of the number assigned to that waypoint. In a notebook, record that number along with a description of that waypoint such as backwater slough, brush, points or anything you've seen at that waypoint that will cause you to fish that region. Although renting a small plane and a pilot for an hour to fly over a lake may seem very expensive, consider the amount of time and the cost of fuel you'll have to use to learn the lake from your boat. You can shorten the time involved considerably and drastically reduce the cost of fuel you use to fish by flying the lake beforehand.

Use Boat Reconnaissance: I usually assume everyone who lives on a lake fishes for crappie and has brush piled out in front of his dock, pier or boathouse. However, look for several key features to find the docks that have brush in front of them. As you drive down the lake, search for docks and piers with rod or pole holders attached to them and chairs set up at the ends of piers and/or docks. Then often you'll find underwater brush in front of or under the pier where you can catch crappie.

To learn more about crappie fishing, order John E. Phillips's book, "The Masters' Secrets of Crappie and Fishing, available for $13.50, including shipping and handling by sending a check or a money order to Night Hawk Publications, 4112 Camp Horner Road, Birmingham, Alabama, 35243; or call 800-627-4295 to use a credit card or PayPal.

TOMORROW: LOOK FOR UNUSUAL PLACES TO FIND CRAPPIE