Winter bank fishing for crappie presents unique challenges but also exciting opportunities for anglers.
By understanding their behavior and habitat preferences, anglers can significantly improve their chances of success.
Crappie are one of the most popular fish to catch in the winter months, so let’s discuss how to do it from the bank.
First and foremost, you need to be able to find crappie to catch them.
And crappie can be a bit harder to find than other sport fish like bass.
But, as long as you keep the following things in mind, you should be able to find them.
Fishing for crappie deep can be tricky when bank fishing in the winter. You can really only fish as deep as you can cast.
But don’t worry, you don’t need to be out in the very middle of the lake.
Just find areas of your lake or pond where there is a deep pool or drop off.
The crappie, like any fish, stick to the deeper water in the winter time to stay warmer.
If you are fishing a small pond, this will most likely not make a difference. But in bigger ponds or lakes, the south side will usually be the deeper end.
There will tend to be a dam, spill way, or creek outlet at the end of the south end.
This makes the water flow towards that end, and carves out a bit deeper water on that end.
In the winter, crappie will stack up in on this side and feed up on the small baitfish that have moved there as well.
No matter what time of year it is, crappie are going to hold to wood.
It can be hard for bank anglers to find submerged wood, especially when you are looking in the deeper water.
But if you regularly fish a lake or pond, you should have a good idea of what types of cover are subsurface.
Wind is your enemy for two reasons when winter crappie fishing. First, the wind makes the water colder and crappie don’t like that.
They will either leave that area or hunker down and not eat until the wind passes.
Second, the cold wind is super uncomfortable for us fisherman. Nobody wants to be out in the blistering wind, freezing their tails off.
There will be areas of the lake that are protected from the wind. This is where you should focus your time and attention.
Part of the reason many anglers ice fish for crappie is because winter crappie prefer much slower and more subtle baits.
So it doesn’t hurt your chances to just sit in one spot and shake around the jig.
Winter crappie are sluggish and don’t want to chase after energetic prey.
Fish your baits very slowly so that you make it easy on the crappie.
I pretty much only use two setups when winter crappie fishing. These are the bobber and jig setup and a drop shot.
The classic bobber and jig setup is the most widely and successfully used crappie technique for bank fisherman.
It allows you to fish slowly and vertically from the bank. Boat fisherman have the luxury of being able to park right over the fish and drop their baits straight down.
But for bank guys, like myself, we need a bobber to hover the jig in front of crappie.
You can play around with depths by sliding your bobber up and down the line.
Or, you can use double, or even triple jig setups that give you multiple jigs going up your line.
These allow you to find out exactly where the crappie are feeding without adjusting your leader.
Drop shot? Isn’t that a bass fishing rig?
If that’s what your thinking, you are kind of right. The drop shot is traditionally a bass fishing setup.
But I have grown to love it for crappie fishing, especially in the winter time.
One of the advantages of a small drop shot is that no matter what depth you are fishing or what drop off you come across, your bait will always be the same distance off of the bottom.
In the winter time, crappie are most likely holding tight to the bottom. So a drop shot rig that always presents your bait 1-2 feet of the bottom is awesome.
This is very useful if you are fishing a bit bigger lake and are having a hard time finding the crappie.
You can fish the bait a bit faster without your bait swinging up and getting out of the crappie’s range.
Marabou Jig
Minnow Soft Plastic
Mini Tube Bait
Live minnows are certainly one of the most popular baits for catching crappie.
But in the winter time, they are not a great option. In the cold water and cold air, the minnows lose their “live bait” quality.
Even if you are hooking the minnows properly, they are going to die very quickly.
Dead minnows can still work on a jig head or drop shot, but it is not worth the effort of buying or catching live minnows because they are going to die quickly.
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