Crappie fishing techniques and crappie fishing tricks

Crappie fishing techniques and tricks

This article about crappie fishing techniques is about one of the crappie fishing tricks I learned one day while fishing walleyes. It was nice to get into some decent crappies but I'd have never used this technique to catch crappies until it worked the first time. It was accidental crappie catching, for sure, but I've used it a few times since, with success best in the late fll.

My dad and I kept pretty good track of where we caught fish and what time of year it was when we caught them. My grandfather did the same thing with my dad. It does make catching fish a bit easier if someone has established where the fish are going to be and when, over a long period of time.

This time it was the right time to go fish walleys from shore and that's where we headed. Middle of fall and we knew if we used 3 1/2 - 4 inch suckers with a spinner and a slip bobber, suspend about 1 foot off the bottom, we could catch some decent walleyes.

For thos of you who care, we were fishing just left of the bridge where the water flows from Lake Shetek to Bloody lake, in SW Minnesota. Thats if you are facing Shetek. BTW, there are walleyes over 13# in Lake Shetek. I've caught a ton of 6#, quite a few 8# and a few over 10# but never anything bigger as far as walleyes go. I've tried for the 13# walleys more than once, without success.

Anyway, we were fishing for walleyes and it just didn't seem to be our day. I'd tried on the bottom, inches off the bottom and up to 3 feet off the bottom. Max water depth on Shetek was 9 feet back then with one hole few people know over 12 feet but it was small and very hard to find.

Finally I decided to try about 1 1/2 feet below the surface and I also cast the rig out as far as I absolutely could. Not a great place to fish for walleyes that close to topwater but I was getting desperate. It wasn't more than a couple of minutes before my slip bobber started going under and moving around. I thought it was just the sucker struggling a little more than normal.

Finally the bobber went down and stayed down long enough so I knew it wasn't the bait. I set the hook as hard as I could and missed the fish. I baited back up and cast it back to the same spot. Got a bite a lot faster this time and finally managed to hook the fish.

At fiest I figured walleye due to the weight but I was wrong because I got to see it's back, then I figured small carp and when I got it close enought to see that was wrong too. It was a big crappie, 1# 15 ounces. Nice sized. ;) I hoped it wasn't just a fluke, baited back up and cast my line back out.

No bites in 5 minutes so I tried to figure out, yet again, what was different. Then I noticed I hadn't cst quite as far as I had before so I reeled in and cast back out as far as I could. Had another bite in less that two minutes. Another crappy about the same size as the first.

That convinced my dad he should rig his rod the same way so he did and it was only a few minutes until he had a big crappy. To make a long story short, we caught our limits of 15 crappies apiece and the all went between 1.5# to 2#. Interesting that if we cast even 5 feet short we couldn't get a bite. I finally started wading out to the tops of my western boots and caught fish faster. Lol, then I had to cast for my dad too because the water was cold and he didn't have boots on.

What did I learn that day? I learned once again that big bait catches bigger fish. No way I'd ever have even thought about catching crappies on 4 inch suckers. The bait was just to big for me to even consider it. If fishing is tough it's a crappie fishing technique or trick you might want to try.

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Crappie fishing techniques and tricks

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