It may take him a few minutes to hit it, but he will eventually hit it. David Rainer is a veteran outdoor writer, former president of the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association and currently is a communications specialist with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
By David Rainer December 20, Categories Fishing. Sign Me Up! Join other outdoor enthusiasts who already get great content delivered right to their inbox. If you don't want to bring your iPad into the bathroom, we can send you a magazine subscription for free! A tasty meal of fried crappie is the end game for successful wintertime fishing. Popular Stories. July 28, Hunting the Common Crow. Comments on this site are submitted by users and are not endorsed by nor do they reflect the views or opinions of COLE Publishing, Inc.
First Name Required. Last Name. Email Required. Interest Fishing Boating Both. Fishing Experience Beginner Intermediate Expert. Boating Experience Beginner Intermediate Expert. Where to fish and boat. Fishing tips and gear. Both Garnier and Boschold routinely start, and stop, their hunts for winter crappies in the weeds. Even when they're ice fishing in lakes with well earned reputations for popping giant slabs in the deeper holes and pockets of confined open water.
Garnier, for example, rarely probes in depths greater than 8 or 9 feet. And he's always looking at blades of grass when he scouts with his underwater camera. He often finds himself in vegetation so thick that he can't prospect properly with sonar, preferring to cast a much wider glance through his Marcum eyes under the ice. Ditto, Boschold. When he walks onto a new crappie lake for the first time and spots a cluster of permanent ice huts set up over moderately deep confined open water, he immediately glances toward shore, wondering where the prime weedline is located.
It's often an overlooked winter bite. One of the reasons fishery agencies frown upon the prohibited practice of anglers catching crappies in one lake and releasing them in another is that smaller and younger crappies outcompete native species like walleyes.
It's a function of their ability to use their numerous, fine, long, gill rakers to strain water and feed more effectively on small invertebrates.
So they outcompete their opponents for food. Until they're about 6 inches long, crappies feed almost exclusively on "planktonic crustacea and free-swimming, nocturnal, dipterous larvae. While big crappies are almost exclusively fish eaters, practical ice-fishing experience tells us they almost never pass up the opportunity to feed on tiny crayfish or insect larvae for three reasons.
In part because they're physically well suited to doing so. They have spent so many of their formative years munching on the diminutive dishes, and there are so many of these easy meals in the weeds. And speaking about fish that trophy crappies are fond of eating, let's not forget something significant that science tells us.
Heck, sometimes I just look down the hole. He knots a tiny swivel to the end of his spider-thin main line before attaching a short three-pound test fluorocarbon leader. He completes the package by adding a Stringease Fastach Clip with a ball bearing to prevent line twist. In addition to being beautiful, black crappies are wonderful table fare, making for gourmet dining. Then I lift it up a foot or two and bang — fish on! In fact, I recently brought along a buddy who had never ice fished before, and we each caught more than 50 crappies in a few hours after work.
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