July 25, 2024
By Matt Straw
Shadows track behind a slowly swimming jig. The plastic tail wobbles enticingly as it slows even further. The shadows close in. Getting closer to the boat. An almost imperceptible nibble transmits up the line. Crappie!
Crappies and bluegills may not always bite a small soft swimmer on a 1/32- to 1/16-ounce jig, but they often follow. It’s a great method for finding panfish in sprawling river bayous. It works in backwaters across the country. If they won’t take the swimmers, go back through them with floats and bait.
I’ve fished river backwaters from Louisiana to Minnesota. What panfish are doing in May depends on latitude. River panfish up north are doing what those backwater slabs and bulls down south were doing in March. Whatever they’re doing, backwaters of the biggest eastern, midwestern, and southern rivers represent the most overlooked panfish bonanzas in the nation. As complex as these areas are, location for the hottest summer bites is purely a matter of timing, water level, and a few simple observations.
The May Protocols Down south, crappies and bluegills might be done spawning in May. Up north, perch might still be spawning when spring arrives later than usual, but other panfish will be staging, feeding, or hiding. Spawning perch (around 50°F) draw huge pike and bass that drive other panfish deep into weed- and woodcover.
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In early May, when perch are spawning, we often catch more toothy predators than panfish with tiny 2- to 3-inch soft swimmers. Bite-offs drive us crazy, but about 6 years ago we tried tying in a short 20-pound Seaguar Blue Label Fluorocarbon leader and began landing the biggest backwater pike we’d ever seen. Toothy critters can bite through 20-pound fluoro sometimes, but it’s rare rather than common now. And it doesn’t deter bass. It’s absolutely hilarious fighting big bass and pike with 7- to 8-foot panfish rods from St. Croix and Two Brothers Innovations.
If spring comes early, crappies and bluegills up north will spawn in waves, beginning as water temperatures reach about 67°F. Because predators prowl the outer edges of the cover, bluegills often spawn in very shallow water under wood. Crappies spawn right on the wood.
Guide Tim Hutchinson connects clients with big panfish on the expansive backwater systems of the Mississippi River. No matter the latitude, spawning panfish want to be completely out of the current, often retreating well into a backwater area. After spawning, some panfish move closer to the current or right out into the river proper, depending on water levels. If the water is high and the current strong, panfish position near the mouth of a backwater or behind current breaks nearby. If the water is extremely low and slow, good luck finding them. Last year, when the Mississippi was really low, we were fishing for smallmouths when bluegills started taking insects off the surface all around us near mid-river, miles from the nearest backwater. Miles from wintering habitat where survival is ensured. Suddenly we were bluegill fishing.
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Tim Hutchinson, hair-jig artist and full-time fishing guide for panfish, walleyes, and bass, works the Mississippi River from Dubuque, Iowa, north into Minnesota. “Pools 9 and 10 in Iowa are vast,” he said. Want to get lost without leaving your living room? Google Earth that region, zoom in close, and start scrolling. Mind boggling. Not to say the backwaters farther north are small or easy to navigate.
“The best time to hunt river bluegills in summer is when the mayflies hatch,” Hutchinson said. “That’s when walleyes and bass get tough, but bluegills are on fire. We have three primary species of mayflies in this stretch. I don’t know the Latin names, but they’re all burrowers that hatch from early June right through July. They burrow in harder bottom materials like sand or mud. They don’t like silt. When they hatch on the main channel they head for trees, eventually die, and fall back to the water. Bluegills sit on the wing dams, right on the edge of current seams, and wait for the river to convey the drifting smorgasbord of spinners to them.”
In backwaters everywhere, the rules for summer panfish in rivers are much the same. Even before water levels drop to average summer lows, panfish push out of the bayous and backwaters into the river proper, using wing dams, laydowns, sandbars, points, inside bends, and bridge abutments as current breaks. When water and current levels drop below average lows, panfish may even abandon current breaks and suspend in the main river channel, hunting emerging insects and minnows.
Way upstream, where backwaters abut relatively wild sections of the Mississippi River, fallen trees come-and-go in the main channel—becoming wandering panfish domiciles. Deadheads. One deadhead can hold hundreds of crappies in the absence of other woodcover once the water temperature climbs above 70°F and stays there for more than a few days (generally July).
In the Mississippi’s many numbered pools downriver, biologists and guides noted a distinct movement by crappies from wood, wing dams, and other current breaks to rocky shorelines and riprap as temperatures dropped into the 60°F range in fall. If a deep pool in the 20-foot range abuts those entrances to backwater areas, crappies begin dropping down to the floor of those pools in August and will continue stacking up there, right on bottom, until water temperatures drop into the mid- to low-40°F range, before retreating into the shallower backwaters. Tracking studies have shown that backwater crappies and bluegills will winter in depths as shallow as 3 feet, though they use deeper holes if available out of the current.
In May, water temperatures range from around 50°F early to around 60°F late in the North. Depending on how far south you go, water temperatures could be anywhere between 70°F and 80°F. Spawning typically takes place in June up north, but backwaters can warm quickly and egg laying sometimes (but rarely) begins in May. Crappies and bluegills mostly utilize the warming shallows in 2 to 6 feet of water. Down south, backwater panfish are done spawning and have spread out into summer patterns, utilizing main-river areas and depths of 10 feet or deeper.
Presentation Blues River backwaters tend to be wildly fertile. A crazy quilt of substrates are the result of sediments carried in by floods and currents. Insects thrive in the various forms of cover. Weeds and wood provide ample habitat for epiphytes and a wide range of minnows. Weeds can choke backwaters in summer, providing those home-body panfish with cover you can’t pull them out of. At some point in June most years, the biggest bluegills we hook in backwaters dive into the weeds. “Snappy, snappy,” as my friend Rick Hammer would say. Which means pressure is light to nonexistent, improving the size structure of backwater panfish considerably over those in local lakes.
Before the weeds go wild, a 2- to 3-inch grub or soft swimmer is our go-to searchbait in May. We use 4-pound mono or braid on 8-foot Panfish Series rods from St Croix. Cast, let the bait drop a couple feet, and begin a slow retrieve. Extremely slow, in fact. The idea is to keep the retrieve moving horizontally, not rising or falling. Jigging, snapping, or twitching can be counterproductive until the water warms. But if predators have driven panfish deep into the wood, we get on top of it and jig vertically.
Out comes my jig box titled The Expendables—old 1/32- to 1/8-ounce lead heads with pot-metal hooks easily straightened in wood. Use an 8-foot, medium-light-power rod with 8- to 10-pound line. Tip with a minnow for crappies and with half an angleworm for ‘gills and perch. Get right over a tangle of wood and start jigging a foot down, using long pauses and working slowly a foot at a time right to bottom, if possible. Panfish may be on either the upstream or downstream side of timber and brush, depending on the amount of current.
Backwater panfish love to use wood if available. Current and predators—bass, pike, walleyes, muskies, catfish—often drive panfish deep into tangled laydowns, stickups, logjams, and brush. The thicker the better.
“From late June on I use 1/32- down to 1/80-ounce jigs for bluegills,” Hutchinson said. “They don’t respond to big packages well in summer. I tip jigs with about 1/3 of a small redworm and no plastic. You don’t want to overbait when the mayflies are out. Waxworms aren’t very effective in summer. Bluegills feed ferociously on mayflies and I think they’re keyed on brown, green, and black.”
Wisconsin DNR River Habitat Specialist Jeff Janvrin verified that river bluegills can utilize almost every type of habitat available in a river during summer, depending on water levels and other conditions. “In summer you might find bluegills near downed cover, behind wing dams in the main river, in vegetation just inside backwaters, or exposed to current during low-water events along shorelines in the main river, depending on water level and current strength,” he said.
Bluegills love wing dams when using the main river in low to moderate flows. Hutchinson likes to turn the boat sideways, drift down to a wing dam, and use two anchors on the upstream side of the boat to hold it right above the shallow rocks. “We approach on the upstream side and anchor where we can see rocks below us,” he said. “Using 1/64-ounce jigs most of the time, we cast 30 feet, wait for it to reach bottom, and drag it a foot along bottom. Then we pause before moving it again.
“We use 5.5-foot ultralight rods. I want that 9-incher to feel like a 2-pounder on 4- to 6-pound mono. It’s a hoot. We catch walleyes, cats, sheepshead—you never know what the next fish will be. If we aren’t catching fish in 5 minutes, we’re gone. They can be on the outside of the wing dam, or anywhere along that inside face. Current is the key word. They want the river to bring food to them, but they’re bottom-oriented, where the current is kind of slowed down.”
Even in current, always have float rods ready. A 1/80- to 1/32-ounce jig—depending on current strength—sporting a crappie minnow, angleworm, or panfish leech under a slipfloat or Double-X-Tackle A-Just-A-Bubble. Scented panfish plastics from Berkley or Northland often trigger just as many hits. Suspending baits under a float is deadly May through fall wherever river panfish exist—in the backwaters or along main river shorelines.
River panfish are extremely challenging throughout summer until water temperatures, cubic-feet-per-second values, and water levels are correlated with classic location options for each and every level of those factors. But eventually finding the biggest, toughest, most un-pressured panfish in your region is well worth it.
National Fresh Water Fishing and Minnesota Sportfishing hall of famer Matt Straw is a longtime Field Editor and mutispecies fishing wizard, panfish among his favorites.
