Family and Crappies

One of my favorite...if not my most favorite fish to target are crappies and my favorite way to fish them is in deep water away from any kind of shoreline structure using the electronics on my boat and the Navionics app on my phone.

On this particular lake, there are a few underwater points that extend out into the lake and end up in deep water, 30 to 35 fow. These are easily found by isolating the depth contours on your Navionics app and then systematically picking apart each point in search of giant schools of crappies.

On this day however, what we found were small schools that were the size of my boat, so staying on them was a little bit of a challenge. Once a school was located, they seemed to be in 19-23 fow, I would throw a marker buoy for a visual reference and fan cast the area trying to see what they

wanted.

My St. Croix Rods were rigged with a variety of Northland Fishing Tacklebaits, but casting wasn't working, the fish were there, but wouldn't hit my offering. I tried vertical jigging using my bow mounted Vexilar Inc flasher, but again no takers. At one point, I casted one of my jigs and set the rod down to grab a drink or something and the slight breeze carried my boat...and my bait through the school and THUMP!!!

Hmmm....let’s try that again, and THUMP! Ah ha...a pattern was born. I continued to go upwind, cast my bait out, let it sink into the school as the wind did all the work and each drift just like clockwork we caught crappies.

With some family visiting from England, who had never eaten or even seen a crappie for that matter, we decided to give the FilletMaker board a little workout and a fish fry to follow.

Next time you are in a situation similar to this, make sure you try a variety of presentations, sometimes it's a slight little change that makes all the difference.