Crappie Fishing in Summer

Historically, crappie fishing was a springtime event. That’s when thousands of fishermen targeted
the slabs. Summer was reserved for bass and bluegill.
After all, with bluebird skies and high temperatures
crappie were unavailable? No so. Crappie, including
the big bruisers, are available year ‘round;
even in high summer.

“It’s gonna’ be a great day!”

Randel Taylor couldn’t have been more pleased. On his first cast he’d caught a 16-inch crappie that ran close to three pounds. Even for Kentucky’s Lake Barkley, which is known for its slab crappie, this was a good fish.

“Nothing like starting the day out right,” Taylor said.

Me, I wasn’t so sure. It’s been my experience that when you start right off with one or two good fish, the rest of the day ends up being a bust. But Randel’s enthusiasm was contagious. Besides, he’s a guide on one of the best crappie lakes in the country, so we should have done well.

Eight long, hot hours of crappie fishing later there was still only one crappie in the livewell. I put the blame squarely on Taylor’s shoulders.

I mean, the fact that the temperature was into the record-breaking mid-90s had nothing to do with it. And the bright, cloudless skies surely didn’t contribute to the slow crappie fishing, no sir. The lake levels, which the Corps of Engineers had been yo-yoing up and down for weeks, couldn’t have had much to do with turning the fish off either. It was strictly Randel Taylor’s doing. “If you hadn’t taken that wall-hanger first thing this morning,” I’d mentioned to him more than once, “we’d have a boatload of crappie by now.”

Taylor just smiled. The truth was, we’d spent as much time exploring for bass as seriously crappie fishing. And we’d taken a very long midday break to escape the heat and bright skies. But now it was late afternoon, and we were heading back out.

Like most good guides, Taylor keeps a couple of spots in reserve for those really tough days: never-fail holes a guide can use to justify his fee. We headed for one of those.

“The trick is to find a shoreline with some shade,” he stressed. “Even a band of shade as thin as two or three feet from the bank will do.”

Of course, shade is just one part of the equation. The bank we were crappie fishing sloped quickly down into deep water. Brush and sunken trees lay just under the surface, and the fish were relating to the drowned timber, about eight feet down.

I was, to make things even more difficult, fly fishing. Taylor is not a fly fisherman. This is not unusual among Southern warmwater fishing guides, most of whom have never seen a fly fisherman. Many of them, in fact, do not believe it’s possible to fly fish these impoundments because of the great depths involved. But he is good at what he does, and he adapts to his clients’ needs. In my case, this meant simply slowing down so I could work the deep water.

Taylor has one crappie fishing technique he uses 99% of the time. He adds a white Twister Tail to a 3/8 ounce round-head jig. He doesn’t even paint the head, because he’s found it to be unnecessary. He lets the jig settle to the bottom then works it up and through the tree branches.

Using the trolling motor, he moves slowly along the shore, within casting distance of the sunken trees. Because the jigs sink faster than just about any weighted fly, his normal motoring speed is too fast for fly fishing. Once I made it plain to him that I needed more time for the flies to sink, he adjusted the boat speed appropriately and the fish started hitting my heavily weighted Hard Head streamer. I’ve since used this crappie fishing method successfully on other lakes, modifying the technique depending on the depth at which the fish are holding, and the flies I’m using.

Crappie can be found as deep as 25 feet under these conditions. Those that are much deeper than that are pretty much out of fly-rod range. However, when they are at that depth or shallower, they can be reached without much trouble. You just need to be prepared for deepwater fishing.

I carry three outfits when fishing for crappie in the summer. The first holds a weight-forward floating line with a fast-sinking mini-shooting head and a fairly short leader. By varying the length of the shooting head I can control the sink rate (and thus the depth) the fly will reach. If the fish are really shallow---say, three feet or so---I remove the shooting head.

The second outfit is loaded with a sinking-tip line, which is also modified with a mini-shooting head. This is used when the fish are holding at ten or 12 feet.

For really dredging the bottom, I use a fast-sinking shooting head. This rig is nothing more than 30 feet of sinking line attached to 50 feet of running line. As with the other rigs, a mini-shooting head is used as necessary.

Obviously, you don’t need three complete outfits. Three reels, used interchangeably as needed, work just fine.

Crappie are minnow eaters. Thus, weighted streamers are obvious choices. The Clouser Deep Minnow, tied in yellow, white, or yellow and white, comes immediately to mind. Sometimes green and white works best, especially if the crappie are fixated on small shad.

Keep in mind, however, that you’ll be swimming the fly through some pretty thick tangles, and it’s likely to hang up unless you add a stiff weed guard. With a little practice you can work the fly through the trees without one, but you’ll still hang up a lot more often that you’d like. Even with a weed guard you’re likely to lose flies at an alarming rate. So be sure and carry lots of them when crappie fishing.

My own Hard Head flies, in various colors, are another good choice. These are a cross between weighted streamers and saltwater epoxy flies. I tie these to imitate shiners and small shad, the main forage for crappie in Southern lakes.

There’s a long tradition of using fine-wire gold hooks when crappie fishing Southern lakes. This isn’t so much as an attractor, but a way of saving gear. If (or, rather, when) you snag timber you can haul on the line hard enough to straighten the hook and pull it free. That way you don’t lose any tackle.

It’s not a bad idea to tie crappie flies on the same hooks. And you want to go larger than you might at first think. Size #6 hooks are none too big; large crappie have no trouble getting their lips around such hooks.

So, when bright skies and soaring summer temperatures put the fish off the bite, try dropping a weighted fly into a brush pile. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results.