There's more than one way to catch crappie on a hot summer day on Beaver Lake. Payton and Tiffany Usey have three tricks up their sleeves for enticing crappie when the lake is warm as bath water and the catching slows down.
The husband and wife from Springdale showed how effective each tactic is when they hit the lake at dawn on a clear July 22. The couple had a nice mess of crappie in the livewell when trip was over, caught by trolling with crank baits, by fishing in the shade of docks and by spider rigging.
Crappie competition
The Beaver Lake Crappie Association is in its first season at Beaver Lake. Crappie fishing tournaments are headquartered at Hickory Creek Marina. Two tournaments have been held. The next event hasn’t been scheduled. A slate of tournaments for 2017 is being drafted.
Tournament limit is seven crappie during summer. The limit will be 15 in the spring. Call Payton Usrey, association president, 479-387-6153, for information.
— Staff report
Payton Usey pointed the bow of the boat south for a run up the White River arm of Beaver Lake, where they pulled out trick No. 1.
"People who say you can't catch crappie in the summertime, well, they're wrong," Payton, 27, said while getting six rods ready for spider rigging.
The technique is aptly named. Four to eight rods are baited with minnows and placed in rod holders on the bow or stern of the boat. When all the rods are set, the rig looks like the legs of a spider. Payton got bit right off the bat.
Two minutes after the last rod was out, Payton reeled in the day's first crappie. It measured nine inches, an inch shy of being a legal Beaver Lake keeper.
"We catch a lot of these nine inch fish," Tiffany said. "It's good to see them," Payton added, "because you know they'll be keepers in the future."
Crappie are a fish of catch and eat, not catch and release. Most anglers are after fish for the pan when they hit the lake for crappie. That includes Tiffany and Payton, but they just love to fish.
Another rod tip shook. "Big 'un," Payton said, lifting up the rod. "This is a good fish. I can usually tell soon as I set the hook." When the short fight was done, a fine 12-inch crappie swam in the livewell.
The Usreys rig their 11-foot poles for spider rigging with a minnow on the hook and a jig attached to the line 18 inches above the minnow. Between the two is a swivel and a sliding sinker above the swivel, similar to a Carolina rig in bass fishing.
Arkie Skillet Filler jigs from Arkie Lures in Springdale are their favorite jigs. The couple is on the company's pro fishing staff.
Their spider rigging spot was a long flat about 20 feet deep at the mouth of Friendship Creek, downstream from the U.S. 412 bridge. The minnows were in water 11 to 15 feet deep.
"This flat stretches all the way from that bluff there all the way to the bridge. See? We're already showing fish on the depth finder. There are thousands of fish on this flat," Payton said. Flats on the southern end of Beaver Lake are the best spots for summertime crappie, he said.
When the bite slowed down at Friendship Creek, it was time to move and try trick No. 2, fishing in the shadows of docks.
Glass-smooth water at 7 a.m. made for a pleasant boat ride out of the White River arm and into the War Eagle River arm of Beaver Lake. Payton eased off the throttle and idled toward a dock next to a steep, rocky shoreline.
The covered dock cast a sharp shadow in morning sunshine that was almost blinding. Payton caught two crappie on two casts from the dock's shady side, about 10 feet deep. Then he put his pole away. The couple planned to fish a Beaver Lake Crappie Association tournament in the morning.
"We're going to leave these fish for tomorrow," said Payton, who is president of the organization.
"The reason crappie are here is there are three things they like," he coached. There's shade created by the dock, structure in the form of the rocky drop-off near the dock, and the fact that drop-off is close to the river channel.
Spider rigging and dock fishing put crappie in the livewell. Now it was time for trick No. 3, and time for Tiffany to do some catching. Trolling crank baits is her favorite crappie tactic.
The couple eased the boat a short distance to another flat. Tiffany set up a small blue camp chair on the back deck of the boat and put out two rods. An Arkie 350 series crank bait was tied to each line. The lures swam about 15 feet deep, 100 feet behind the boat. Payton used the trolling motor to ease along the flat at just under 2 mph.
His favorite lure color is chrome with a red back and chartreuse belly, or chrome with a blue back. Tiffany's favorite is "any color that will catch fish," she said. "There are days when I catch more in the back of the boat than he does up there."
This hot Friday was one of those days. A feisty 11-inch crappie was her first crank-bait fish, followed by a couple more keepers. Payton, too, found success with crank baits.
"It looks like the water is warm enough for crank baits, but too warm for spider rigging," Tiffany said. Their depth finder showed a surface temperature of 88 degrees. It also showed the Usreys that they were trolling over a flat that had fish.
"A depth finder is huge. Otherwise you could be fishing a flat that has no fish on it," Payton said.
The last fish of the day came from a stand of timber in the water. Payton dipped a jig into the stained water around the trees. Down went his rod tip. When it came up another keeper danced on the hook.
The Usreys joined other anglers at the Hickory Creek Marina fish cleaning station to filet their catch of eight good-sized crappie. Their fellow fishermen had done well, too, catching their fish by trolling crank baits. It's just one trick for catching summertime crappie.
Flip Putthoff can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAFlip
Sports on 08/02/2016