RISE AND FALL

DAD, DAUGHTER WORK FROM BOTTOM UP FOR CRAPPIE

Katelyn Piper and her dad, fishing guide Jason Piper of Rogers, work jigs around timber for crappie Friday in the Horseshoe Bend area of Beaver Lake. Fishing has been good this fall around timber and docks, the Piper team said.
Katelyn Piper and her dad, fishing guide Jason Piper of Rogers, work jigs around timber for crappie Friday in the Horseshoe Bend area of Beaver Lake. Fishing has been good this fall around timber and docks, the Piper team said.

BEAVER LAKE Deer hunters aren’t the only ones who look to the forest during November. Fishermen, too, cast lures and bait toward the trees when it comes to catching crappie during autumn at Beaver Lake.

Submerged timber is home, sweet home for crappie at all Ozark lakes. The water level at Beaver has dropped steadily for months. This fall, there are more targets than ever for anglers after a mess of tasty crappie.

Anglers can see more trees and brush to fish around than when the lake is high. That works in a fisherman’s favor, said Jason Piper of Rogers, a crappie fi shing guide at Beaver Lake.

Like deer hunting, it helps to have a plan for hunting crappie as the water cools. The formidable fishing duo of Piper and his daughter, 11-year-old Katelyn, revealed their plan during a two-hour evening trip in mid-October.

Trees and docks are two of the team’s favorite targets. Trees have been giving up more fi sh this fall than docks, Piper said. With the low water, forests of fl ooded timber can be seen.

Where does a fi sherman start?

Crappie don’t lurk around every tree.

On this outing, father and daughter made a beeline in Jason’s boat to a cove a bit east of the Arkansas 12 bridge. Treetops poked from the clear 62-degree water.

Jason and Katelyn didn’t pickjust any tree. They seek timber in the deepest part of the cove.

“You want trees that are in water 30 to 45 feet deep and as close to a channel or ditch as you can get,” Jason said.

In this small cove, it was easy to find the prime spot, the channel.

Both banks sloped at a 45-degree angle toward the water. So the channel, or deepest water, in this cove likely ran right down the center.

Sometimes the channel is just a run-off ditch. In another spot it might be a creek channel. A depth finder is the surest way to fi nd the channel.

Father and daughter worked from the bottom up. They lowered curly-tailed grubs to the bottom and gradually worked them toward the surface.

Jason prefers a grub with a blackbody and chartreuse tail, threaded on a one-sixteenthounce jig head. He crimps a tiny split shot to his 6-pound test line about a foot above the jig.

“Let it sink to the bottom and work it up real slow,” Jason coached. He twitched the rod tip a little as he reeled the jig up.

The catching wasn’t as fast and furious as Jason and Katelyn like in this bay-shaped cove east of the bridge. They had to work for their fi sh. A small fish or two here, then finally a keeper. Crappie must be 10 inches or longer to keep at Beaver Lake.

Fish seemed to hover around 15 feet deep over water that was 35 feet deep in this spot.

We had about two hours to fish on this pleasant Friday evening. Jason wanted to try another spot before sunset. He fired up the outboard and we headed south to Horseshoe Bend park.

SCHOOL TIME

Fisheries chief Mark Oliver with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission said crappie school up more in the fall, gathering in bigger bunches. They are more scattered during summer.

He’s seen this first-hand during autumn scuba-diving trips. Water is clearer during fall than summer and better for seeing fish, said Oliver, an avid diver.

Do crappie feed more as the water cools. The fi sheries chief admits he’s no crappie expert, but said if they do increase their feeding, it isn’t by much.

Jason and Katelyn hoped to find an uptick in feeding activity when Jason idled into a cove across the lake from Horseshoe Bend park. Smoke curled from campfires next to travel trailers and tents on shore.

A bright, setting sun seemed to set the tops of trees ablaze. Our fishing time was running out. Once the sun set it’d get chilly in a hurry and we had a short boat ride back to the boat ramp.

By now, the father-daughter team had switched to tube jigs to wrangle in two more crappie. Jason is fond of a black jig with a chartreuse tail or pink with a white tail.

If we were cleaning fi sh, Jason and Katelyn would have a nice little meal. We tossed all our fish back on this evening trip.

Those crappie better watch out. Next time we may be in the mood for a fi sh dinner.

Outdoor, Pages 6 on 11/15/2012

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