# East Fork Crappie fishing tips



## Bostonwhaler10 (Apr 30, 2012)

Is it as easy as just putting a minnow on hook about foot down from a small bobber and casting by treetops? I've never fished for crappie but recently had some and boy they are good to eat. So I plan on filling freezer this fall.


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## HOUSE (Apr 29, 2010)

Oh man, you are going to get it from the crappie guys on here, lol. They've got all kinds of dirty tricks up their sleeves. I'm no expert by any means, but the times we've gone out we relied heavily on our fishfinder to find them before tying off on a tree or dropping anchor on an offshore structure. It was then trial-and-error to see what color and what depth they responded to most. This website helped: www.crappie.com

Also, here's a time-table regarding water temps that I saw repeated online from one of the "crappie guys" that might help:
*55-60 degrees*, male crappie should be in shallow water looking for and fanning beds.
*62-65 degrees*, perfect spawning temps. Any bad weather/fronts can set the whole process back
days or weeks.
*70-75 degrees*, female head to deep water, males guard nests until water reaches 75 degrees.
Crappies are very sensitive to temperature variation.


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## Bostonwhaler10 (Apr 30, 2012)

Be easy on me. I'm a fishing beginner really. My first year with a boat an am just trying to learn to be a savy veteran.


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## bsmith (Mar 26, 2010)

We fish them with live minnows under a slip bobber rig. They typically stay close to submerged structure (timber, rock piles, etc) and they tend to school up. To find them, we either look for them on the fish finder and set our bobber to the proper depth or find them the old fashioned way:

Start in 20 feet of water or so. Put your slip bobber about 15-18 feet deep. See what happens. If you don't catch anything move up a few feet, try again until you either start catching them or confirm that there are no crappies in that area.

Do that at each piece of submerged timber you find in 20 feet of water. Then do it in 15 feet of water, 10 feet of water, etc. Once you find them they will be in that part of the water column in that area of the lake.

This is why you often see people posting crappie reports on here saying that they're catching them X feet deep in Y feet of water. This information saves you a lot of trial and error.

They are a lot of fun to catch. If you really dial in on a school of them you can catch lots of them. They actually fight pretty well on light tackle and your by catch will be an occasional channel cat which is a whole lot of fun on light tackle.

Hope that helps.


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## Bostonwhaler10 (Apr 30, 2012)

bsmith said:


> We fish them with live minnows under a slip bobber rig. They typically stay close to submerged structure (timber, rock piles, etc) and they tend to school up. To find them, we either look for them on the fish finder and set our bobber to the proper depth or find them the old fashioned way:
> 
> Start in 20 feet of water or so. Put your slip bobber about 15-18 feet deep. See what happens. If you don't catch anything move up a few feet, try again until you either start catching them or confirm that there are no crappies in that area.
> 
> ...


How long do you wait before you change depths.


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## crappiedude (Mar 12, 2006)

Good post bsmith. 
One thing I can add is sometimes jigs will out perform minnows, sometimes it's the minnows that win out. Sometimes jig color makes a big difference so try different ones.


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## bsmith (Mar 26, 2010)

Bostonwhaler10 said:


> How long do you wait before you change depths.


Take one pole each and let it sit in a spot 5 to 10 minutes. Try 2 or 3 spots in an area at a given depth before changing depths. You can also try to locate with a minnow on a jig head but it's a little harder to zero in on the proper depth when doing that. (see below)




crappiedude said:


> Good post bsmith.
> One thing I can add is sometimes jigs will out perform minnows, sometimes it's the minnows that win out. Sometimes jig color makes a big difference so try different ones.


Thanks crappiedude. We occasionally put a minnow on a jighead and work it around the areas to help cover a little more ground when locating them but we don't really use artificials much for crappie. I see the serious crappie fisherman do that a lot. We don't get too serious about it. I really like to take people crappie fishing on their first fishing trip and that's when I target them most of the time. Catching so many fish at such frequent intervals keeps them from getting bored


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## fish fry (Sep 24, 2011)

Put a minner on a slip float cast it out THEY WILL COME! If they dont it was better than being at WORK!


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