May Is Prime Time For Crappie At Beaver Lake

STAFF PHOTO FLIP PUTTHOFF Standing timber was among the targets Glenn worked May 1 in the Prairie Creek area.
STAFF PHOTO FLIP PUTTHOFF Standing timber was among the targets Glenn worked May 1 in the Prairie Creek area.

PRAIRIE CREEK -- Mitch Glenn wouldn't touch a crappie with a 10-foot pole. Catching them? Now that's a different story.

Rods 10 feet long are the length Glenn prefers for lobbing jigs toward the lairs of crappie that are currently on a spawning spree at Beaver Lake. The limber, lightweight rods let him make conventional casts or reach out with the rod tip to lower a lure right into the middle of a bush or branches that hold crappie.

At A Glance

Crappie Basics

Crappie tend to gather close to cover in deep water, except in spring when they move shallow to spawn. The crappie spawn usually coincides with the blooming of dogwood trees.

The best live bait for crappie is minnows. Small marabou or plastic jigs work well for catching crappie. Small spinners, such as Rooster Tails and Beetle Spins, are good to use when crappie are active. Tipping the hook with a commercially prepared crappie nibble may entice more crappie to bite.

Source: Arkansas Game & Fish Commission

Beaver Lake Crappie

Crappie must be 10 inches or longer to keep at Beaver Lake. The daily limit is 15 crappie.

Source: Arkansas Game & Fish Commission

Crappie are in the fishing spotlight during May. That's when the tasty pan fish spawn in shallow water. They can be easy pickings for anglers after a mess of fillets. Glenn, of Garfield, is a crappie fanatic who fishes for them all across Arkansas and adjacent states. He's sacking up limits this spring at Beaver Lake. The exception has been on chilly, blustery days just after a cold front when there's not a cloud in the sky.

These, of course, were the exact conditions when Glenn and I got together to fish May 1.

Tough Odds

Glenn sat down behind the steering console of his boat wearing insulated ski bibs and a thick hoodie. A west wind whipped Beaver Lake into a meringue of whitecaps at the Arkansas 12 bridge access.

"There's no place on Beaver Lake where we're going to get out of this wind today," Glenn hollered over the gale.

Add a falling water temperature to the mix of conditions. It measured 54 degrees at the bridge. That's 10 or more degrees colder than mid-April when Glenn was catching limits of crappie.

"It's sure put a stop to their spawning for now, but it only takes a couple of warm days for them to get going again. If there's good news, it's that the spawn might last longer. Shoot, we could end up with really good crappie fishing over Memorial Day weekend," Glenn said.

Avoca Hollow, northwest of Prairie Creek park, was our first stop. Glenn suggested our game plan should be to fish slow and easy to have a prayer of catching fish.

"On a day like today, I'll be happy just to get bit," he said.

Glenn is sales manager at Arkie Lures in Springdale and carries boxes of the company's product line in his boat. Glenn grabbed a 10-foot pole and lobbed an Arkie Pro Model tube bait toward a shoreline bush. I tied on a Shinee Hinee crappie jig. It's one of the top lures for Beaver Lake crappie and a big seller around the country for Arkie Lures.

Jigs with some chartreuse in the color scheme work well at Beaver Lake. Glenn's tube had a black body and chartreuse tail. At 2.5 inches, it's longer than most crappie jigs.

The Shinee Hinee I cast had an orange head, silver body and chartreuse tail.

Bushes and lay-down trees close to the bank get Glenn's attention during May. We worked bushes and trees along gravel banks that sloped about 45 degrees.

Glenn's tube got bit and his 10-foot pole bent easy as cooked linguine. A writhing 11-inch crappie was our first of the afternoon. A twin of that crappie hit the Shinee Hinee soon as Glenn's tossed his fish into the livewell.

Glenn eased us along in Avoca Hollow and Prairie Creek with his trolling motor. What followed was a steady parade of crappie through the afternoon, but we worked for them. Lay-down trees held the most fish. Each spot gave up only a single crappie or two.

Every crappie was a keeper of 10-inches or longer. We didn't catch one sublegal crappie.

Other fish came calling as well, including largemouth, spotted and smallmouth bass, plus one green sunfish that ambushed the Shinee Hinee.

"That Shinee Hinee has probably put more dinner on the table than any lure I know of," Glenn said. "If it swims, it'll eat that thing."

Crappie were filling the livewell, so we released everything else.

FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT

Catching good-sized crappie in conditions that could have put the skunk on us is testimony to the good crappie fishing at Beaver Lake in recent years.

Jon Stein, fisheries biologist with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, said a creel survey of anglers is taking place this spring at Beaver Lake.

"People say they're catching good numbers of keeper crappie but also smaller fish. That's good news for next year because those fish will be legal size," Stein said.

Crappie reproduce fine on their own, but Beaver Lake will get a booster shot of crappie this fall. Game & Fish is raising crappie in the Beaver Lake nursery pond. The 30-acre fish-rearing pond is next to the lake in the Blackburn Creek area.

Trap nets and electrofishing are used to catch large adult crappie for brood stock. These are released into the pond to spawn. About 600 adult fish are spawning in the nursery pond now, Stein said. The young crappie that hatch will be released in October. Stein hopes the effort results in 500,000 crappie fry.

"We used to go to the smaller lakes to get our adult crappie, but the population is so good at Beaver right now that we can get them there," he said.

Stein attributes the good fishing this spring to an excellent crappie spawn in 2011. The lake level was high that spring. High water creates good spawning habitats because it floods bushes and grass. The vegetation is useful cover for young fish.

The spawn was good last year as well, he said. The lake was low in early spring. Grass and weeds grew on the exposed shoreline. Then the lake level rose. All that new vegetation was flooded to create superb spawning areas for crappie and largemouth bass.

SOUTHERN THING

Follow crappie fishing at Beaver Lake and one may notice most anglers fish on the south end of the lake. Prairie Creek is about as far north as Glenn ventures.

"It's because they're easier to catch in the stained water," Glenn theorized.

Beaver Lake is clearer on the north end than the south. That can make the fishing tougher on the north end.

"Unless they're grouped up under a dock or something in that clear water, I can't catch them," Glenn said. "I've heard that people who fish up that way may not catch as many crappie, but the ones they catch are big."

The fact the south end is closer to the region's cities may also have something to do with it, he added.

North or south, May is to crappie fishing what November is to deer hunting. A handful of jigs or a bucket of minnows are all the ammo a fisherman needs.

Outdoors on 05/08/2014

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