Autumn a popular time for crappie fishing

Ken White Special to the News-Leader

Published 2:17 PM EDT Oct 13, 2018

During the fall, a lot of anglers welcome diversions like baseball playoffs, football or other sports. However, some anglers need more than a good football game to keep them indoors in the autumn — they need to be fishing.

Recently I met a crappie fisherman who had just returned from a fishing trip to Truman Lake, where he caught a limit of good-sized crappie. Many crappie anglers have found fall fishing for slab size crappie can be very good if they learn how to pinpoint the fish during this transition time. There are two keys to catching fall crappie: (1) determining the depth where the fish are holding and (2) finding active fish.

Suspended crappie usually are inactive and nearly impossible to catch, so you need to focus your efforts on break lines, where shallow water drops off fast into deeper water. Food available, along with light and cover, dictate where fall crappie hold. Food is the magnet that draws the fish to a certain region, while light and cover dictate the depth the fish prefer.

On the southwest Missouri big impoundments, threadfin shad spawn in late summer or early fall. The spawning grounds are usually coves. These small baitfish in coves come at a time when the spring spawning shad are too large for the crappie to eat, so the new fish draw the crappie into coves like a magnet.

Crappie move up and down the water column depending on the available light. On cloudy days or when the water is off color, look for the fish in shallow water, but when the water is very clear, check deeper water.

To find where the fish are holding, check your graph for suspended fish. These fish aren’t the ones that will be hitting, but it will tell you what depth on the break lines the fish will be and they are the ones that should be hitting.

The final key to pinpointing crappie in the fall is cover. Where there is no cover, the fishing will not be good. Cover, like brush or stumps at the same depth as the fish, usually produces some good fishing.

Since fall is a transition period and the crappie move up and down a lot, you may need to modify your techniques to match the conditions. Some productive methods include vertical jigging and casting jigs. If crappie are positioned on a bunch of stumps in 20 feet of water, vertical would be the best choice.

Using balanced gear will help catch crappie in the fall as well as other times. Heavy line or stiff rods while jigging will work against you. Heavy line causes the line to fall too fast and a stiff rod hampers your ability to feel subtle hits. I have watched anglers fishing for crappie while fishing off docks with heavy gear get strikes and not even know it. Balanced light gear maximizes the effectiveness of your presentation and prompts more bites.

The most effective lures for fall crappie are small jigs. They fall through the water looking like natural bait. Veteran crappie anglers know that lightweight-matched equipment is the way to go for autumn crappie.

If you don’t want to start the winter without crappie in the freezer, use the right methods to catch slab crappie. Pinpoint crappie hangouts by finding baitfish, the depth where the fish are holding, target break lines, choose tactics that match the conditions and balance your fishing gear. October is growing in popularity as a good month to go crappie fishing as anglers bring in nice strings of fish. It's also a great month to be outdoors.

Ken White writes about hunting and fishing for the News-Leader. Contact him at kdwhite7@windstream.net.

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