Fishing at a time and in a place when most other anglers doubt they’ll find successful crappie fishing. When floods come and many rivers and lakes back up into woodlots and fields, often the crappie will follow the moving water into the newly-inundated lands. When the water’s up you can make some large catches in freshly-flooded woodlots where baitfish concentrate and the crappie school up and feed on these baitfish. To catch these shallow-water crappie, fish with minnows and jigs, and hold the baits only 1 or 2 inches under the surface. In muddy and rising water, light doesn’t penetrate very deeply into the water. Most of the baitfish usually will swim in less than a foot of water. The baitfish will follow the moving water into the shallows to feed off the new plant life and microscopic animals coming into the lake as the water floods. By keeping your bait in that very shallow water, your minnows or jigs will appear more natural to the crappie, and you’ll take more fish. Your best choice to get in these areas as most anglers’ boats draft too much to move into these shallow water regions would be small aluminum, johnboat or a one or a two-man type of easily maneuverable boat.
Paper mouths will react to rising flood waters just as bass do. They’ll position themselves near the edge of the shore in very shallow water, facing toward the bank where the baitfish run. Crappie fisherman who understand how and where to find bass when rivers flood, also will know where to look for crappie under the same circumstances.
So get out there and don’t let the chocolate milk water scare you off. Crappie will bite!]]>
