Five Stringer-Filling Tips for Summer Panfish.
When it comes to catching a meal, crappies are the beginning and the end of it.
The usual answer, however, is fairly simple: Look to deep structure.
Just how deep depends on the water clarity in your particular lake.
In clear northern lakes, crappies may frequent rocky humps or points 20 feet down, or even deeper.
Use ultralight spinning tackle with 4-pound line.
Soft-plastic or marabou crappie jigs in the 1⁄16- to 1⁄8-ounce range can be cast, slow-trolled, or jigged vertically to find fish.
Sweeten the Jig: Bring some fathead minnows, 2 inches long or less, in a minnow bucket for tipping your jigs.
Where there’s one fish, there are usually more.
Find Cover Combinations: A pairing of cover types often produces more fish.
When it comes to catching a meal, crappies are the beginning and the end of it. No other panfish so deliciously transforms from fish to fillet (although some fishermen, including me, might argue for the virtues of a platter of perch). In the Midwest and South, where crappies are most abundant, it’s a toss-up as to whether catching a stringer of crappies or having them for dinner is summer’s greater joy.
A. Cast to weeds. B. Baitfish in weeds. C. Jig vertically. D. Deep-water hump.
How to Hook Up
By the time water warms in July, crappies are done spawning and have typically abandoned the shallow and thick cover they used in spring. Finding summer crappie schools is the hard part. The usual answer, however, is fairly simple: Look to deep structure. Just how deep depends on the water clarity in your particular lake. In clear northern lakes, crappies may frequent rocky…
