Hall of Fame guide Tom Neustrom hoists a spinner-rig slab.
July 26, 2024
By Cory Schmidt
Seems to me crappies are content to spend the entire summer and at times, much of the fall and winter, swimming around the same aquatic neighborhood. Which makes it all the more puzzling why I’ve so often violated Roland Martin’s old axiom: Don’t leave fish to find fish, son!
I could point out a dozen different waters where I’ve made this particular fishing blunder. One instance I’m thinking of now is a 500-acre lake I’ve fished on and off for 10 years. In other words, I ought to know better. Early in spring, I nearly always find crappies milling around in 10 to 15 feet of water, just a couple casts from 5 feet and then in emerging lily pads, bulrushes, and various submerged greenery farther up into the shallows. On warm, sunny days, crappies might swim into a few feet of water to thermoregulate and to pluck a few bugs off plant stems.
A month or two after spawning and well into summer, the mistake I’ve often made is to run to other parts of the lake in search of the very same crappies. During one of those 10 Julys or Augusts, I finally figured out the fish hadn’t moved more than a football field from their early spring haunts. Once 5- to 8-foot-tall pondweed (cabbage) fields emerged, a lot of the fish had reclaimed the same deeper residences they used in early spring. Then last October, friends and I landed on a sizable crappie school occupying this same 15-foot vegetated zone and caught several dozen fish on whatever lure we wanted to throw.
Beyond summer and fall, I suspect the fish also use this location in winter, but because a small river courses through the system and we avoid the lake during the ice-fishing season, I can’t verify my theory.
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By no means am I saying you can fish this deep forest every day all summer and find crappies there. Or that the pattern works on all lakes. It doesn’t, of course. Certain days, the crappies simply seem to vanish. But a few days to a week later, at least a portion of the population is often back home again. Where they go on off days makes for an interesting study, though side-imaging and Panoptix are helping us gradually realize crappies often move into mid-zones that lie between the outside of plant growth and the deepest available basin areas.
Significant in many lakes are transitions from sand to muddy silt, which show clearly on side-imaging and which typically occur at the base of a drop-off, frequently between 22 and 26 feet of water. When crappies shift from vegetation 10- to 15-feet deep to the mid-zone transitions—usually in late June or early July—they become models of stability, and you might find a sizable segment of the population stationed there until September. Clustered in groups of a few dozen to several hundred fish, mid-zone crappies appear to graze on invertebrates and zooplankton, tracking along the transition line.
Pro crappie angler Dan Dannenmueller keys on thermoclines with crankbaits for midsummer crappies. I believe the base of the drop-off where the transition occurs acts as something of a filter or collection zone for invertebrates. Sonar depicts a sort of boiling cauldron of activity here—a thick band of indistinct ooze with smaller swarms of life bubbling up 5 to 10 feet above bottom. As you move farther out into the lake, the soft bottom endures, but the swarms of life become widely scattered and the possibility of landing on crappies becomes random to remote.
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Factors that prompt outward crappie migrations are again, anyone’s guess, though days with high and rising barometric pressure certainly affect crappies in vegetation. Heavy boat traffic over vegetated flats can certainly also play a role. Thankfully, unlike other seasons, summer can offer week-long periods between fronts, generating stable, nearly predictable patterns, particularly for crappies in deeper water.
The stay-at-home tendencies of crappies might not apply perfectly to all lakes, particularly large lakes, where crappies might move a mile or more from their spawning sites. In rivers and flowing reservoirs, it might not seem to apply at all. But if you examine available habitat on a broad scale, you often find that summer crappie location simply reflects the best available habitat, such as the first main-lake flat topped with clumps of cabbage outside a spawning bay, or brushpiles at the mouth of a secondary creek arm.
In small to medium natural lakes, the stay-at-home inclinations of crappies applies more often than you’d think, which is why when we hit new lakes in summer, the best approach to finding fish is to begin at likely spawning areas and work outward and slightly deeper from there.
In larger spawning bays or lakes within large lakes, crappies may not leave those locales all year long. On northern portions of Lake of the Woods, a reliable way to find summer crappies is to motor back into what I call a hidden lake, or relatively small basin connected to the main lake via channel or narrows. The best hidden lakes harbor expanses of at least 20 feet of water, while shallow littoral zones sprout emergent and submergent vegetation, such as wild rice, pads, or rushes with pondweed, coontail, elodea, and northern milfoil. Some of the best hidden lakes we’ve found feature a broad expanse of shallow water at the tail end, formed by a feeder creek.
As a break between casting for July muskies, we often sneak back into one of these hidden lakes and troll small crankbaits or curlytail grubs along the outside edge of the vegetation or the primary drop-off. While trolling, we often encounter little crappie pods of a dozen or more fish suspended 20 feet down over 30 feet of water. We’ll stop and drop Slab Raps or little jigging spoons on their crowns and catch a few before continuing to troll. Other days, we find clusters of fish hovering around sunken timber in 15 to 20 feet of water—cover that’s obvious on side-imaging sonar. Finding and catching summer crappies in a few of these hidden lakes on Lake of the Woods is such a slam dunk that we more or less take for granted that we can always secure a fish dinner this way.
Trolling, Strolling, Bombing It took me a long time to gain confidence in crankbaits for crappies, but I now view lures like Rapala’s Ultra Light Shad as primo summertime search lures that also trigger the largest fish available. Diving 5 feet over 8- to 15-foot depths, the Shad dances across the upper reaches of aquatic plants, where crappies often hover. Even if crappies hover slightly deeper, they willingly ascend to eat the 11/2-inch shad bait, which also mimics flat-sided baby bluegills and crappies upon which big crappies frequently prey.
When trolling the Ultra Light Shad at 1 to 1.3 mph with my Ulterra/iPilot bowmount, I twitch the rod tip every 10 to 20 seconds on 8-pound Sufix Nanofil to make the bait surge forward and slowly sink on the pause. A 4-foot leader of 6-pound test fluorocarbon isn’t always necessary, but I like its relative transparency for clear lakes and its ability to shed debris. One super stick for twitch-trolling has been a 7-foot 6-inch St. Croix Avid (AVS76MLXF2), a medium-light spinning rod with an extra-fast tip. The tip moves the lure instantly while the rod’s forgiving midsection arcs heavily, protecting light line and keeping crappies pinned. As with jigging, crappies typically attack the crankbait during the pause or just as it resumes its wobble.
When pulling plugs through dense cabbage becomes inefficient—or in negative-bite scenarios—you can continue contacting crappies by trolling slightly slower (.5 to .75 mph) with a 1/16- or 1/8-ounce jighead and a 2- or 3-inch curlytail. Berkley Power Grubs, Garland Stroll’Rs, and Yamamoto Grubs are fine crappie baits in the category, each rigged on a VMC Moon Eye Jig. Make a long cast behind the boat and start moving forward, twitching the rod tip frequently.
On a parallel path, legendary walleye and crappie guide Tom Neustrom has fine-tuned an exceptionally effective spinner rig-trolling program over the past several decades. “The biggest mistake summer crappie anglers make is to go into the cabbage and fish too deep below the fish,” says Neustrom, who fishes some of the top trophy crappie lakes in the North. “Crappies in cabbage usually hover high in the plant tops. They’re not hunkered down near bottom as folks assume.”
“Neustradamus” starts most days by side-imaging with his Humminbird Helix 12, looking for vegetation and small clusters of fish. “One key is to dial down the scan range to 50 feet either side of the boat,” he says. “The narrower scan yields better screen details and lets you pick out individual fish hovering within the stalks. You can spot the different tufts of cabbage that hold fish, and drop waypoints on them. I like to see at least two or three fish together before I consider dropping a waypoint, and once we’ve assembled a trolling stretch of icons, we start fishing.”
Rather than targeting sprawling shallow flats completely covered in greenery, he prefers flats with scattered, isolated clumps of cabbage. Lengthy stretches with isolated clumps provide more edges and ambush points for crappies.
“Moving 1.25 to 1.3 mph with a little spinner rig behind a 1/8- or 3/16-ounce bullet weight, I can keep the rig right over the top of the vegetation,” he says. “Speed is critical to crappies and the iPilot makes it easy to fine-tune. We run just 30 to 35 feet of line behind the boat, or in clear water up to 40, but that’s it. Every now and then, pop the rig a little. Pop it off cabbage. Otherwise, we’re simply moving the rod right to left 2 to 3 feet. Mostly, you trigger fish on turns, speeding the outside rig and increasing spinner-blade vibration while slowing the inside rig. Crappies bite a spinner aggressively. It’s a strong almost bass-like bite.”
Prior to the summer season, Neustrom pre-ties about a hundred crappie rigs, each built with 36 to 40 inches of 14-pound-test Sufix Advance Fluorocarbon. Although fluorocarbon sinks, he believes the thicker-diameter leader elevates the rig above the vegetation, while also minimizing bite-offs from pike. Above a #1 VMC gold 9146 Aberdeen hook, he runs five beads and a metal clevis with a #3 gold Colorado blade, all tied to an ant-sized ball-bearing swivel at the opposite end. He impales a 2-inch chub or golden shiner by inserting the hook into the mouth, out the lower gill and then back through the stomach, leaving a slightly exposed point. He says this specific hooking arrangement aligns the minnow naturally and provides a measure of snag-resistance.
He wields the same 7-foot 6-inch St. Croix Avid rods I do for their forgiving, relatively soft tip sections, and pairs these rods with Daiwa 1000-size Ballistic reels and 8-pound Sufix Advance Monofilament. The rod flexes just enough to drop the tip back to the fish and lightly sweep the hook home.
While trolling shines for searching edges or transitions or for when crappies scatter over at least a few hundred yards, jigging takes over when fish huddle in deeper packs. Beyond favorite jig-softbait combos, the #4 Rapala Slab Rap and Ultra Light Rippin’ Rap have emerged as hero crappie baits in vertical schooling scenarios—ideal for short pitches or straight vertical jigging. The rattle-endowed Rippin’ Rap gets the nod in dirty water or where crappies key on shad, while the Slab Rap produces aggressive bites in clearer lakes. To activate the Rippin Rap’s rattle, you need a slightly more aggressive rod pump. The Slab works with less aggressive pumps and frequent pauses, helicoptering in wide circles and fluttering head-forward on the drop. For jigging, my favorite panfish rod is St. Croix’s 6-foot 9-inch Legend Elite Panfish, which clutches something like a Shimano Stradic 1000 and 3-pound-test Sufix Nanobraid.
LiveScoping Slabs Reflecting summertime trends north, Alabama tournament pro Dan Dannenmueller says anglers on Midsouth impoundments largely ignore postspawn crappies, even given their propensity to concentrate in schools. “A lot of things can be happening in summer, depending on river flow levels and current generation at dams,” says Dannenmueller, whose home waters include Alabama and Coosa river reservoirs. “Last year, we had a drought and almost no flow, causing oxygen to decline to about 1 ppm. Crappies went nearly dormant, sitting on bottom and refusing to bite.
A sizeable school of crappies, as clearly depicted by Garmin’s Panoptix LiveScope. “In low-oxygen scenarios, the best move is to go directly above or below the dam—any place with some current,” he says. “Or, if your lake has a thermocline, locate it and fish just above that depth, often 12 to 20 feet down. In rivers, summertime crappies often sit right behind main-river laydowns or rockpiles and you’ve got to sneak up on them.
“With Panoptix, we’ve watched huge schools of crappies—over 100 fish—come flying out of a single brushpile when the trolling motor goes down. Even the vibration of my voice is sometimes enough to spook fish. Sounds crazy, but LiveScope is opening our eyes to a lot of things, including just how sensitive crappies can be to sound and vibration.”
For Dannenmueller and other competitive crappie anglers, Garmin’s dynamic sonar technology has changed certain fundamental approaches to the game. “For smaller fish, we still do plenty of trolling with spider rigs, crankbaits, and double jig rigs,” he says. “But in tournaments, we like to target big fish, and LiveScope makes it a reality. While spider-rigging jigs with LiveScope, for example, I might dead-set with eight poles for two people. We move into the fish with all of the baits in the water, and then cut the trolling motor to let baits glide down toward the fish. LiveScope reveals big fish so well that we’re doing a lot more stop-and-drop style fishing, targeting individual 2- or 3-pounders.
“We’ve watched a single big white crappie swim into a shad school and ‘part the seas.’ After the crappie feeds, it moves off to the side to digest for a few minutes, before swimming back into the shad and doing it again.
“Some anglers are chasing one big fish on Panoptix for 20 minutes or more, dropping a jig a few feet above the fish. Sometimes, you almost have to hit them on the head before they bite. If the fish are spooky, you want to pitch in front of them and let the jig pendulum down. You can usually discern which way a crappie is moving, and you never want to cast behind them or fish below them.”
He says for spooky fish, he’s increasingly casting with Mylar and hair jigs and experimenting with drop-shot rigs, particularly around brushpiles. In heavy cover, a drop-shot allows him to keep the hook or jig clear above the debris, while the sinker penetrates into the wood. He also relies on weedless jigs, such as TTI Blakemore’s new Weedless Slab Runner. For drop-shotting, the TTI Blakemore Live Shot’N hook comes with pre-tied hair and Mylar fibers for a lively breathing action, fished with or without a live minnow.
When all else fails, he returns to some of his favorite woodcover, where black crappies often linger before, during, and sometimes well after the spawn. Dannenmueller believes big crappies have adapted to heavy fishing pressure by suspending near cover, rather than within it directly. Regardless, it seems to suggest, once again, that crappies cherish good cover across the seasons. If crappies could talk, they might just tell you: There’s no place like home.