Crappies like cover, most of the time. Sure, I’ve found them bunched in open water, sitting 40 feet down with another 60 below their bellies. And sometimes scattered across clean sandflats. But mostly they like to nestle among tree branches or hide among tufts of lake grass. Their conversion to cover is never stronger than in spring, when crappies feed in the shallows prior to spawning and then nest in protected coves and banks.
Long poles are natural for probing this sort of cover. The thicker it is, the more that poles get the nod over casting approaches. At some spots where I’ve found spring crappies, the holes in cattails and maidencane simply did not allow a cast.
Traditionally, the term pole refers to a long blank lacking reel or guides, with line passing through its length or secured to the tip. Here, we also include long rods with reels and guides in this category.
Clear water and thinner cover suggest a casting approach, as you may need to cover more water to find groups of fish, and you also may need to remain farther back to avoid spooking them. During some springtime phases, crappies can be extremely spooky, while at others they seem almost too gullible. You’ve got to try several options.
Poling Places
On backwaters of the Mississippi in Minnesota, black crappies push into sloughs and old oxbows soon after the ice breaks up. They instinctively find black-bottom areas with old marsh grass, sticks, and beaver lodges—spots you can’t even get into come late June, without a canoe. At first, fish hold in slightly deeper channels and holes that sometimes separate floating bogs buoyed by swamp gas. Here, spooky fish must be fished by casting—lobbing bubble-fly combos or pitching lightweight plastics.
But as waters warm and the spawn approaches, new vegetation thickens. Crappies push into this thicker cover, where pole fishing comes into its own. I’ve used poles as long as 14 feet, with a rather fast tip and enough backbone to pull a pounder up and out. Line’s not an issue in these combat conditions, though I suppose you might get more bites with 4-pound test. But breakoffs would be too frequent. Go with 10-pound mono and you still have to retie every couple of hours.
Fused braided lines like Berkley FireLine or those with a coating like Stren Super Braid and Spiderwire Stealth also are good options, though you should switch to a softer rod to avoid tearing out hooks when pulling and landing fish. I’ve used poles with and without a reel and prefer those with a modern mill for adjusting line length and to provide drag when needed, both to battle the occasional lunker or, more commonly, a wandering largemouth; or to tighten down when you have to bend out a hook snagged on an unseen brushpile.
In vegetated lakes and reservoirs, cover rarely is as thick. But wild rice beds and bulrushes also are prime spots for spring poling. Because bulrush clumps are dense and wild rice provides a fine overhead mat where crappie feel secure, you can approach within 10 or 12 feet, even in the clearest lakes.
Santee-Cooper Perspectives
Near the southern end of the crappie’s range, similar patterns apply earlier in the year. Though he fishes crappie tournaments across the country, Whitey Outlaw calls Santee-Cooper home, a lake renowned for producing good bites for black and white crappie. “You can catch them year ’round but the shallow bite generally starts around the first of March,” Outlaw says.
“Black crappies quickly move from deeper channels where they’d spent the winter, to the back ends of creeks and swampy areas full of cypress trees. Black crappies here like grass and I find them around ’gator grass, duckweed, and water hyacinths. While there’s not much hydrilla or other underwater weeds left, the cypress trees are thriving, and crappies flock into them, too.”
