Natural Lakes

During winter, suspended crappies are a bonus in natural lakes. High-flying crappies, those big, buttery, golden slabs that float under your ice hole 5, 10, 15 feet or more off bottom, are the easiest ones to catch. When they scratch their bellies on bottom, micro-suspending one or two inches above the mud, they become harder to find.

So, why do we find crappies suspending one day and out of sight the next? To better understand when, where, and why crappies suspend in winter, consider the types of lakes we find them in. At one end of the spectrum we find shallow eutrophic and late-mesotrophic lakes. Drain the water from one of these ancient lakes and you reveal a basin that resembles a giant saucer, with very few reefs, points, humps, or other forms of fish-holding structure. You might be pressed to find double-digit depths, as well.

At the other end of the spectrum are the big, sprawling early- to mid-stage mesotrophic lakes and even some very deep oligotrophic lakes. Drain one of these monsters and, wow—structure everywhere. Shallow flats surrounded by steep drop-offs, reefs, benthic zones, chains of submerged islands, and humps, and more vertical structure, by far, than found in our eutrophic lake.

Between these two extremes exists a third type of crappie lake—one more difficult to label because it exhibits characteristics of both extremes. For the most part, these lakes lack an abundance of structure and cover. While the basins are simple and mostly featureless, they exhibit more ups and downs than a standard, bowl-shaped eutrophic lake. These lakes have stretches of moderately deep water, but nothing beyond 30 to 35 feet.

Whether or not crappies suspend has a lot to do with the layout of the lake. Crappies hug bottom to feed on invertebrates until they become satisfied. Then, they might suspend. That’s why basin shape, structure, and water depth are such important locational tools in natural lakes. Combine these with plankton migrations, and the picture unfolds.

Basin-Shaped Lakes—In structural terms, Figure A is a typically shallow, fertile, dishpan-shaped basin. Though exceptions always exist, crappies rarely suspend in these types of lakes. Mostly, they remain glued to within a foot of bottom during winter. Without fine-tuning your sonar or straining your eyes, it’s very difficult to find crappies with sonar in these lakes. But when these lakes are small and lightly fished, they represent a crappie angler’s dream come true. When large and pressured, dishpan lakes can become the opposite—a crappie angler’s nightmare.