No Bites? What You Should Do Before Giving Up
Story and Photos By Don Wirth

Mississippi's Grenada Lake, Alabama's Weiss Lake, Oklahoma's Lake Eufaula and Kentucky Lake in Tennessee and Kentucky are all legendary reservoirs regarded by crappie experts as hallowed ground, the absolute best crappie venues in the country. They've all got the right set of conditions to produce giant crappie — plenty of brushy cover, expansive spawning coves, fertile water, a long growing season and tons of baitfish. A trip to any of these great lakes is virtually guaranteed to provide even a novice crappie angler with tremendous action, not to mention a shot at the trophy fish of a lifetime.

But unfortunately, many crappie fans will never get to fish any of these awesome lakes. Either because of travel distance or a lack of time or money, the majority of anglers are limited to fishing close to home, often on waters where the crappie bite ranges from mediocre to extremely slow, even during the so-called "hot" period of late spring.

If "tough" describes the crappie lakes you usually fish, no need to worry. A team of experts is offering their advice to help you catch more and bigger crappie from these stubborn fisheries. Try their tactics on your next outing and discover the hidden potential of your home waters.

What Makes A Lake Tough?
Why are some crappie lakes better than others?

"Most great crappie lakes are very fertile, meaning they have a lot of plankton in the water," explains veteran Kentucky Lake guide Garry Mason. "Plankton serves as a food source for shad and other baitfish, and gives the water some color, which helps conceal predatory game fish species including crappie. The best lakes also have plenty of wood cover in the form of brush, stumps, laydown trees and man-made stakebeds. Crappie use wood cover for concealment and when spawning. While most of these lakes have a lot of shallow water, they also have extensive structure in the form of creek and river channels, humps and ledges."

However, not every lake has what it takes to make it a great crappie producer.

"Highland reservoirs, for example, can be notoriously tough for crappie," Mason says. "These deep, clear lakes are extremely infertile, with lower populations of baitfish than more fertile lakes. Their main cover is rock, which ranks way below wood as a crappie attractor. Crappie in these lakes tend to suspend offshore, making them hard to locate and catch."

In addition, many lakes that were once good crappie producers have declined over the years.

"Over-fishing has definitely hurt a number of crappie lakes nationwide," Mason adds. "To remedy this requires a two-pronged approach. Anglers must get over the fill-your-freezer mindset and limit their crappie harvest, and fisheries agencies must impose stricter length and bag limits on crappie. At Kentucky Lake, we have a 10-inch size limit and a conservative 30-fish bag limit, which is helping to sustain the great fishing on this reservoir. Plus, shallow wood cover breaks up and disappears as a reservoir ages, and unless it's replenished by anglers, crappie tend to move offshore, where they're more difficult to find."

Of course, tough fishing conditions can plague even the best crappie venues from time to time.

"Last spring, we had an unusual number of really windy days, which made it not only difficult, but sometimes downright dangerous to be on this huge body of water," Mason notes. "Of course, we all know that a severe cold front can destroy a great crappie bite, as can a sudden influx of high, muddy water. Knowing how to connect with crappie when conditions aren't ideal is what separates the men from the boys on every body of water."

Into The Depths
Dale Hollow Lake guide Fred McClintock knows you won't find a tougher crappie lake than this 28,000-acre reservoir straddling the Tennessee and Kentucky borders.

"It's everything you don't want in a crappie lake — super-deep, gin-clear and almost totally lacking in shallow wood cover," he says. "Yet it produces monster crappie if you know where they are and how to catch them."

Successfully catching crappie from a lake like this demands a totally different fishing approach than you may be used to.

"Most anglers fish for crappie around shallow cover, but this won't work on a highland reservoir because there's no reason for the crappie to be shallow," McClintock says. "Most shallow areas are composed of rock, gravel or clay, and there's precious little wood. Baitfish schools in these lakes live offshore as opposed to around the banks."
Instead of using the usual shallow-water approaches, McClintock has learned to adapt his tactics to the extreme conditions he encounters on this cavernous lake.

"Because the baitfish are offshore, the crappie are offshore, suspending in open water," he notes. "This dictates a trolling vs. casting approach. What I do to catch crappie is more like big-water walleye or striper fishing than the style of crappie fishing you're probably used to."

McClintock first locates baitfish schools and suspending crappie on his graph and then trolls a mixture of small crankbaits and jigs through them, using his bow-mounted electric motor for power.

"Most of the bait and crappie will be suspending in or adjacent to submerged creek channels," he says. "I troll my lures at the level that most of the bait is showing up on my graph. This is a shotgun vs. a rifle approach. The water here is so clear that crappie holding in the general vicinity of a shad or alewife school can easily see the lure and will swim up to strike it."

McClintock usually will troll for fish holding in the 12- to 20-foot range. If they're deeper than that, he will vertical jig a tube bait or small spoon for them.

"I've caught 4-pound crappie 55 feet deep from Dale Hollow," he says.

In spring, heavy rains can send a torrent of muddy water surging through a highland reservoir.

"Muddy water in a lake as clear as Dale Hollow presents a golden opportunity for crappie fishermen," McClintock says. "It'll often send them straight to the banks, where they'll hit twist-tail grubs. Every spring we catch some huge crappie while casting grubs for the lake's trophy smallmouth bass. They'll also hit small spinnerbaits and crankbaits with noisy rattles when it's muddy."

Searching For Slabs
On some lakes, stunted crappie are the rule, while keeper-sized fish are hard to come by, and trophy slabs are about as rare as hen's teeth. Is there any hope of ever catching quality crappie from a body of water like this? Definitely, says Priest Lake guide Jim Duckworth.

"There are lots of crappie in Priest Lake, but most of them are small," he says. "Here, the bigger fish are more structure-oriented than cover-oriented. Rather than hold tight to submerged brushpiles and fish attractors in shallow coves, quality crappie gravitate to big main-lake flats, creek-channel drop-offs and ledges. They either suspend or hang around isolated stumps and remain unnoticed by most fishermen."

During late spring, Duckworth trolls small crankbaits for these offshore fish, probing the 12- to 18-foot zone.

"I'll troll natural migration routes leading out of spawning coves, such as creek channels and ditches," he explains. "The outer edges of big flats are especially good now. Here, crappie will suspend in the water column around baitfish schools, waiting for the lake to warm a little more before gravitating to their deeper summer haunts."

Probing deep channel structure is another strategy Duckworth uses to locate bigger crappie. Like McClintock, he's caught slabs more than 50 feet deep.

"First, locate a big ball of bait on your graph, park directly over the school, then drop a spoon down through the minnows," he says. "The smaller crappie are usually feeding aggressively right in the middle of the baitfish, while the bigger, lazier fish tend to park under the school, picking off injured shad that drift down to their level. Keep a waterproof marker in your shirt pocket, and when you hang your first good crappie, mark the line at the rod tip before reeling the fish in. Then you can drop your spoon to the exact same depth level time after time and catch a bunch of nice fish."

Weed Whackers
Weedy lakes are seldom known as strong crappie producers, both because this species doesn't favor heavy weed cover and because most crappie anglers find it extremely frustrating to fish grass. But Kentucky Lake guide Tom Moody has perfected some killer tactics for coaxing super-sized slabs out of grass beds.

"Crappie, unlike bass or northern pike, don't like real thick weeds, but many anglers don't realize that these fish are perfectly at home in thinner grass where they have some freedom of movement," he says.

According to Moody, a good way to catch grass-oriented fish is with a shad-tail grub on a 1/16-ounce head rigged under a small bobber.

"Adjust the float so the grub just barely touches the top of the grass when hanging straight down, cast the rig over the weeds and retrieve it with a popping motion so it hops erratically like a frightened minnow," he adds. "Keep your drag loose when fishing grass beds. Besides big crappie, you're liable to tie into a lunker bass when using this tactic."

McClintock also catches slab crappie when probing Dale Hollow's submerged cabbage beds for bass.

"During prespawn, crappie are usually lurking near the tops and edges of the grass, as opposed to hunkering down in the thick stuff, and they'll swim up and whack a suspending jerkbait," he says. "I guess this proves that sometimes the best way to catch a big crappie from a tough lake is to go bass fishing instead."