Try These Tips For Post-Spawn Crappie

Spring is the season when ev­ery angler becomes a bona fide crappie expert.
In late March and early April in many parts of the country as the water warms up into the mid-50s to low 60s, a massive influx of spawning crappie move shal­low to make beds and lay their eggs. They create a standing room-only situation along shal­low, visible shoreline cover like willow trees, brush, logs and vegeta­tion.

During this time the world abounds with crappie experts, be­cause almost any fisherman can catch these tasty pan­fish when they are spawning. Al­though the crappie is primarily a deep-water, off­shore species, the annual spring spawning migration makes them espe­cially vulnerable by station­ing them in obvious, common-sense places where the neo­phyte angler can find them. And the protective nature of the fish—like most freshwater gamefish—makes it easier to catch during the spawn.

All the world is a carnival during the spawn, but immedi­ately after the spawn, it is as if Freddie Krueger comes to town to make a movie called, “Nightmare on Your Crappie Lake.” And a nightmare is what it is. Crappie fishing becomes the toughest it will be all season, even for the knowl­edgeable, ex­perienced anglers who are able to follow the crappie migration throughout the year.

Post-spawn crappie are the most difficult to catch.
“That’s a common problem in most lakes,” says Steve Mc­Cadams, one of the country’s most renowned crappie guides. “And that’s one reason why some people actually believe crappie only bite in the spring.

“Of course, that is a com­mon fallacy that was even written about for years. You can under­stand their way of thinking be­cause they’ll really catch them during the spawn, but when that post-spawn pe­riod comes in, the fishing be­gins to get tougher each week on the same shoreline bushes where they had slayed them a few days earlier. Every week­end, they find fewer fish there, and by late May they can hardly catch enough to take home and stink up a skil­let. They say ‘Well, the season is over,’ and put away their poles.”

Even high-caliber crappie ex­perts like McCadams, who guides on the famed slab-crappie Mecca Kentucky Lake, admits that post-spawn crappie often baffle him.

There is a three-to-four-week period that usually oc­curs in late May and early June in most of the country in which crappie go into a recu­peration period to re­juvenate from the rigors of the spawn­ing process. To under­stand why they are difficult to catch and, hopefully, use that knowl­edge to improve your post-spawn success, a little biol­ogy lesson is in order.

Immediately after spawning, biologists tell us the fe­male crappie leave the nest and move off onto nearby brush or vegeta­tion. After a short stay in shal­low water, the females then move to the nearest mid-depth drop-off or vegeta­tion. The males are left to guard the eggs and eventually the fry, until the tiny fish scatter and do what sci­entists have never been able to actually document. After leaving the fry, the males and females will regroup during the later stages of the post-spawn period before then moving to their summer posi­tioning in deeper water.

You can begin to compre­hend the reasons why post-spawn crappie are so difficult to catch. It begins with the challenge of finding them. That can be tricky because of the lack of concen­trated fe­males immediately after the spawn. It becomes more dif­fi­cult as the wide-ranging ten­dencies of the species moves them into less-conspicuous places—even suspending in open water. This in-between stage for crappie separates the true experts from the instant springtime experts. And once you locate post-sp­awn crappie, it can be an even greater challenge to get them to bite.

“Post-spawn crappie are tough to catch for the same reasons that post-spawn bass are difficult to catch,” explains Oklahoma’s Ken Cook, best known as one of America’s elite tournament bass pros, but a crappie enthusiast who stud­ied the species exten­sively during his days as a state fish­eries biologist. “The reasons begin with the fact that they are hard to find, but they cer­tainly don’t end there.

“First of all, Mother Nature provides a fail-safe mechanism in sunfishes, of which crappie are a member. That is, they don’t eat while they’re on the bed. So during a portion of the post-spawn period, the fish still have that in­grained in them. And they’re tired and lethargic from the stress they go through during the spawning process.”

Cook’s first approach to catching post-spawn crappie is to avoid fishing for them. In­stead, he moves around the lake and con­centrates on spawners for as long as possi­ble before turning his attention to the post-spawn fish. It is the same process that many bass anglers use to avoid being con­fronted with the slug­gish post-spawn members of that species. You can accomplish that by simply following the natural heating cycle of a lake and reser­voir. Start on the northern banks, bays and protected coves where the water warms up the earliest in the spring, and take tempera­ture readings to find spawning water (about 64 to 70 degrees) throughout the lake.

“But eventually, we all have to face up to post-spawn crap­pie,” Cook laments. Locating post-spawn crappie is the first test of skill and pa­tience. Post-spawn crappie move off into deeper water, but not to the depths in which they will ride out the summer tempera­tures. Cook looks for them along any drop-off adjacent to the shallow spawning area that has some type of wood or weedy cover.

There are three areas where post-spawn crappie are espe­cially abundant, according to the experts:

• The mouths of bays. When crappie leave the shallow back of the spawning bays, they usually move out to the en­trance of the bay where it meets the main lake. Look for them to hold around vegeta­tion, brush or wooden structure on drop-offs bordering the open lake.

• Creek mouths. Crappie that have spawned along the shore­lines of a creek will move to the mouth of the creek and hold along brush or weedy cover that is positioned along a change in depth. A key to lo­cating these fish is re­member­ing that stressed crappie will avoid the current from the creek. They will usually be positioned off to the side of the creek mouth where the water is calmer.

• Steep shorelines. In shore­lines that have varying degrees of depth (like a long point), crappie will use struc­ture on the shallowest portion to spawn and then move to brush or vegetation in deeper water for the post-spawn re­cuperation period.

• If adequate cover isn’t avail­able nearby, many post-spawn crappie simply suspend in open water—the panfish spe­cialist’s nightmare.

McCadams has utilized knowledge gleaned by a study of post-spawn crappie by Mis­souri state biologists to catch more of the non-aggressive fish. In that study, divers doc­umented the movement of crappie from pre- through post-spawn periods in the clear waters of several Mis­souri reservoirs. To McCadams, the most telling discovery the biol­ogists made was a ten­dency of post-spawn crappie to devi­ate from their normal struc­ture-oriented pattern, scattering and moving off into open-wa­ter flats where they are simply sus­pend.

Although most post-spawn crappie are found in depths of 10 to 20 feet, I should empha­size that the clearer the water, the deeper post-spawn fish will sus­pend.

“Crappie suspend a little dif­ferent from bass,” Cook ex­plains. “They pick out a level and suspend uniformly at that level throughout that portion of the lake. Crappie suspend like a blanket—side by side at the same depth—while large­mouths, white bass and almost any other gamefish tend to be grouped at all levels of depth. Depending on what that level is, they will suspend above struc­ture like a brushpile, in­stead of relating directly to it. That is why a lot of people miss suspended crappie. They fish under them.”

The depth at which post-spawn crappie suspend is di­rectly at­tributable to two natu­ral factors in the makeup of the water col­umn—the ther­mocline and pH breakline. The thermocline is the water tem­perature level that is most com­fortable to fish (meaning it has adequate oxygen as well), while the pH breakline is the point in which the level of al­kalinity and acidity in the wa­ter is acceptable.

By measuring those two fac­tors, you can determine the likely depth of the fish. To determine the depth of the thermocline, lower a tempera­ture gauge probe down until you reach a point of signifi­cant change. Note that depth and check for a pH break­line, which will pinpoint the depth of the fish even further. A thermocline can have a varia­tion in depth of 5 to 10 feet, but the pH breakline (which will be lo­cated in the upper part of the thermocline) will be in a 2-3 foot zone.

“They will stay at that depth until some factor changes,” Cook adds. “The sunlight level can change, which causes the photosynthesis to change, which will alter the composi­tion of the water column—ei­ther the oxy­gen, pH or the temperature. One of those factors will change and the fish will move up or down a foot to 10 feet to again find the level that best meets their needs.”

The next step is to locate structure at the depth indicated by those readings—although suspended crappie don’t al­ways relate to underwater ob­jects or changes in the bottom contour.

If you don’t have a tem­pera­ture probe or pH gauge, a quality depthfinder can show a thermo­cline.

The suspending nature of post-spawn crappie is the ma­jor reason why most fishermen get frustrated in their late spring/early summer efforts. Crappie anglers are structure-ori­ented and tend to move from brushpile to brushpile without fishing the open-water in be­tween. Ironically, this open wa­ter no-man’s land may be where the post-spawn­ers are holding.

That is the reason Mc­Cadams spends more time mak­ing random casts with a jig—instead of vertically fish­ing spe­cific spots—during the post-spawn period.

Trolling may be the most pro­ductive method of locating sus­pended post-spawn crappie. Trollers cover enough wa­ter to find post-spawners. When you see a large number of boats trolling, you can pretty well guess that a high per­centage of the fish are suspended, and that’s why the trollers are having suc­cess catching them.

In many parts of the coun­try, crappie fishermen use a tech­nique commonly referred to as the “spider rig” to run baits at several different levels while drifting or using trolling-motor power to cover open water. Four to eight poles are positioned all around the boat with minnows or jigs swim­ming at a variation of depth from 6 to 20 feet. After a couple of strikes at the same depth, the trollers then adjust all of their lines to fish that depth.

Trolling is the easiest way to pick up scattered, individual fish—typical post-spawn crappie.
Locating post-spawn crappie is only the first challenge. Get­ting these sluggish fish to bite can be just as difficult.

“It is the toughest time to ac­tually catch them,” Ken Cook says. “They are stressed out from spawning and they are not real interested in feed­ing. Once you find them, they are catchable as long as you suspend a jig or minnow at the right depth and keep it in front of them long enough.”
Crappie are notorious for be­ing depth-conscious. They will rarely move up or down in depth to hit a bait or lure. And fishing at the right depth is even more critical with post-spawn crappie.

For catching suspended crap­pie, most fishermen will have to use a cork or slip-bob­ber to regu­late depth. Only the most experi­enced and skilled angler can cast and retrieve a bait at the proper depth with consistency.

Two special fishing products make depth regulation simple.

Zebco has developed the Crappie Classic spinning and spincast reels that have a depth-control feature. The feature al­lows you to preset the depth from one to 40 feet and once you get a strike, you can automati­cally set the depth for the next cast.

For catching post-spawn crappie in deep, clear lakes or reservoirs, a small-diameter line like DuPont’s MagnaThin will enable you to receive more strikes than more visible types.
For decades, the standard crappie weapons have been live minnows and the simple jig—fished separately or to­gether. Both can be fished vertically or cast. And the depths of those two offerings can be easily regu­lated, making them ideal for post-spawn fishing.

When fishing for inactive crappie, the size of the jig can be very critical, and it’s wise to ex­periment. I’ve seen times when changing from a 1/8-ounce to a 1/16 -ounce jig or even a 1/32-ounce jig made a tremendous dif­ference in the number of fish caught.

A productive combination for post-spawn crappie, accord­ing to McCadams, is a small floating jig tipped with a lively minnow and weighted with a split-shot about 24 inches above it. He fishes it like a lead jig, but be­lieves its allure with these non-aggressive fish comes from its super-slow de­scent through the water.

Rather than confront the chal­lenge of locating and catching these inactive crappie, many fishermen choose to simply sit out the post-spawn period and wait for the fish to move to their structure-ori­ented summer lairs. Generally, once you can no longer find beds, the post-spawn stage is over, and it is safe for less-de­termined crappie fisher­men to return to the water.

“The best crappie fisher­man is one who can change when the fish change,” Mc­Cadams says. “Crappie don’t just disappear when the spawn ends. The best crappie fisher­man works hard enough to follow post-spawn fish through the transition period from shallow to deep, and that de­termination pays off.”