# Northwest Ohio Crappies



## Chad Recker (May 23, 2020)

Looking for some good places to go crappie fishing in Northwest Ohio. I live in Putnam County. Willing to travel up to 1.5 hours. Either from shore or I have a 12 foot boat. I know summer time fishing can be rough but just wanna know what bodies of water I stand a good chance of catching keeper crappie. Thanks in advance.


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## AtticaFish (Nov 23, 2008)

I'm 2 counties East, pretty much all the reservoirs around me have good size crappie from time to time. Beaver Creek, Clyde, Bellevue, Bucyrus and i have been told Willard but have never seen them with my own eyes. You will have to sort through lots and lots of little fish no matter where you go though.

This time of year..... i personally give up on the crappies. Will catch a few here and there but they are usually accidental catches when i am trying to catch bluegill. Have to make sure and get crappie on ice quickly in the summer also or the quality of the meat goes down quickly.

I used to chit-chat with a guy (wow, maybe 15 or 20 years ago now) who would drag an aluminum john boat with a trolling motor up the hill at Bellevue #5. If you have ever been to #5, you might say impossible, but he had a system. There was a fence post or a tree stump about 3/4 of the way up the hill from the parking lot. He would run a rope up and around the post then back down the hill. Hooked one end to his truck and the other end to his boat. Hop in his truck and drive away from the res pulling the boat up. Quite a site but impressive ingenuity. Anyway, back on subject...... he would troll with floating rapalas and snap weights for the last hour of light and a little into the night and land massive crappies. Easily out over 30' of water. He had a fish finder on the boat and said he could watch as the fish started coming up off the bottom as it got dark and he adjusted his trolling gear to try and put the lures in front of the fish. I wouldn't believe it if i hadn't seen him do it with my own eyes. He actually inspired me to buy my first kayak way back then. I was never ever able to reproduce his quality of fish though.


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## Scum_Frog (Apr 3, 2009)

Used to troll for crappie all the time in the local res and land bigguns.......I just went past Res 5 yesterday and thought to myself I wish the would put a decent ramp in.


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## KTkiff (Jul 30, 2004)

When you are trolling reservoirs this time of year for crappie are you mainly just trolling the shoreline?


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## AtticaFish (Nov 23, 2008)

As i mentioned in my last post, i pretty much give up on crappie all together through the summer. This guy i used to watch catch fish stayed well off shore. He had a certain area he would make circles around but it was all out over deeper (30 or so) feet of water. He always said he could pick out the fish on his sonar pretty easily.

A couple weeks ago i fished at Lake Hudson just over the border in Michigan. I caught a few crappie while i was targeting schools of bluegill. This was using jigs vertical and watching my ice fishing flasher. Both the bluegill and crappie were schooled up over deep water but the schools were all 12 feet down from the surface. There was some activity up higher than that, but really nothing going on below that point.


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## fisher person (Jul 2, 2004)

For some reason I thought from a boat ir a yak was a no go on the Bellevue reservoirs. Not saying I have snuck out myself , though I could be totally incorrect. 
Nice story on the boat up that hill


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## AtticaFish (Nov 23, 2008)

Back when the ODNR had an actual website...... it used to say electric only boats were permitted. I don't think the map and info is on the website now with their temporary site. For a while i think they had actual signs up there maybe that said no boats or shore fishing only or something along those lines. I believe those are gone now.


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## fisher person (Jul 2, 2004)

There are signs still there before u walk up the hill I dont have the verbiage memorized but it seemed like it was stating shore fishing or ice fishing only.
Blew my back out, and been flat on my back for over a seek.
you are killing me with the nice pan fish posts at evening lol.


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## AtticaFish (Nov 23, 2008)

fisher person said:


> There are signs still there before u walk up the hill.........


I'll just keep telling myself there isn't any signs I guess. Haha I do know I saw on one of the ODNR pages that it was electric only but can't find it anymore.

Sorry to hear about your back, hope you can get healed up and back at it quickly. The bluegill have been biting pretty good!


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## Bowtie (Aug 31, 2018)

Chad Recker said:


> Looking for some good places to go crappie fishing in Northwest Ohio. I live in Putnam County. Willing to travel up to 1.5 hours. Either from shore or I have a 12 foot boat. I know summer time fishing can be rough but just wanna know what bodies of water I stand a good chance of catching keeper crappie. Thanks in advance.


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## Bowtie (Aug 31, 2018)

Chad Recker said:


> Looking for some good places to go crappie fishing in Northwest Ohio. I live in Putnam County. Willing to travel up to 1.5 hours. Either from shore or I have a 12 foot boat. I know summer time fishing can be rough but just wanna know what bodies of water I stand a good chance of catching keeper crappie. Thanks in advance.


Beaver creek res. Is loaded with black crappie.


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## AtticaFish (Nov 23, 2008)

Bowtie said:


> Beaver creek res. Is loaded with black crappie.


Doesn't really matter honestly...... but Beaver has white crappie as far as I know. Not sure I have ever caught a black there. When they are close to spawn (with their tuxedos on) the white males look a lot like blacks.

I say it doesn't matter, but thinking twice, it may adjust how you focus on where you fish for them. Black crappie are notorious for staying up shallow almost all year long and whites will tend to suspend out over deep water.


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## Bowtie (Aug 31, 2018)

AtticaFish said:


> Doesn't really matter honestly...... but Beaver has white crappie as far as I know. Not sure I have ever caught a black there. When they are close to spawn (with their tuxedos on) the white males look a lot like blacks.
> 
> I say it doesn't matter, but thinking twice, it may adjust how you focus on where you fish for them. Black crappie are notorious for staying up shallow almost all year long and whites will tend to suspend out over deep water.


Yep you are right. Their whites not blacks. I've been killing em there trolling the shore line though. I'm really not much of a crappie fisherman as you can tell with my fish I.d. lol. But that place is loaded with em. I really have never targeted crappie before. I went there trying to get into some eyes and ended up stumbling into those.


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