Crappies

[Hooker]

Where are they biting at?,,,,never done any fall crappies,,,was told they'll pull up in the creeks when the water temp gets in the mid 60's but where are they now?

 

[Trickwrm]

I'm interested to see what kind of info pops up in this thread. I can catch them up in middle tennessee pretty well but they're still elusive for me on the chick. If you ever wanna team up down here give me a shout. Fishing out of a kayak gets old and I'm looking for a partner

 

[BRamsey]

Shoot deeper docks!

 

[Mr. S]

BRamsey, I have been doing that almost every trip out as of late, but then again I haven't been out in a month. Anywhoo I have been shooting the deep docks in Harrison Bay and the docks around the bluff near Soddy Creek Delta. the only crappies I have been able to find are a few in a cut on the back of the golf course and a few in the cut on the left bank headed into Soddy creek. I've had no luck shooting docks at all this season. Maybe I'm just not holding my mouth right.

 

[MrWiskers]

Deeper docks for sure. I got 25 with 15 keepers yesterday in only 2 hours. The dock I was fishing was around 14 feet deep and the fish were only down around 5 feet. I had to fish 3 docks before this one before I caught a fish. Just keep trying docks until you find one holding fish. Keep in mind, the fish will change depths so try bringing the bait thru the dock at different levels until you find them.

 

[polo-dog]

You are right, the crappie start to move back in the creeks in the fall. If you have a topo map of the creeks you can see which ones will be "deeper". Deep is relative however, deep might be in 5 feet of water where most of the docks are in 2 feet of water or might be in 18 feet of water where most of them are in 10 feet of water. Sometimes the best docks are not the deepest, often the fish will be where there are more posts or where a dock owner has sunken brush piles close by, or where there is an eddy. Sometimes you just have to fish a bunch of docks to see which ones are holding the fish. The good thing is that often if you catch some crappie at a 6 count on one dock in a creek there is a good chance that a 6 count will work everywhere in that creek, so, you can hit multiple docks and not have to fish at all depths to figure out which count is right, you can just fish a 6 or whatever the best count was at the first dock. That does mean that you might fish one dock, catch two on it in a few casts and then leave them biting to check out the other docks. Scouting like that will ultimately teach you which docks are most productive but might not catch you as many on that particular day. Giving up the instant gratification of catching a bunch on one dock will help you catch bunches and bunches on many specific docks.

The day after the above post by MrWiskers I saw him fishing a dock across from my house with his buddy Alvin and I called him and he picked me up and we went and hit selected docks that he or I knew should be holding fish this time of the year. We bypassed about 60-80% of the docks that we could see to fish ones that usually hold lots of fish. Sometimes we can figure out why they hold on those specific docks, sometimes not. We ended up with over 60 crappie, had 15 keepers over 10 1/4 (his lower length limit) and probably had about 10 or so more that were over the 10 inch limit. All in just a few hours. Sometimes just putting the time in in the past is what it takes to really catch a bunch in the present.

There are fish that average bigger out on the main lake and in deeper areas of the creek but we were looking to catch bunches and not have to fish at a 30 count to get them. That can be fun sometimes but that's more like fishing and not catching. We prefer to catch lots and have enough keepers to keep our families and friends happy with fillets. Later in the year we will be able to catch more and bigger fish at shallow counts but for now most of them are small. Thankfully they are not all 9 3/4.