Winter will be finished in about six weeks, and crappie anglers are getting excited about the arrival of spring.
Depending on where you live, crappie will begin their pre-spawn activities in late February through early March. They will move to the banks to spawn in mid-March through April, and that's when they are easiest to find and catch.
In many lakes and rivers, crappie are stacked up along creek and river channels. They are not concentrated, so it's not really productive to target specific types of cover. Trolling enables you to catch fish that are suspended and following baitfish along channels.
Mitch Looper of Hackett, a well-known trophy bass specialist, taught me this technique many years ago at Lake Shepherd Springs near Mountainburg. It was known as a "dead sea," as are many of Looper's favorite lakes.
Near the upper end of the lake, Looper marked some big fish on his electronic graph. We had already enjoyed a stellar morning of bass fishing, but Looper guessed that these new fish on the graph were probably big crappie. Trolling slowly upstream near a bend in the main channel of Frog Bayou, I used a small, deep-diving crankbait with silver sides and a chartreuse back. Looper used a small jig.
Big crappie stacked in the deep water of the bend, and each pass produced at least one hefty slab measuring 14-15 inches. They hit light, and every bite came while trolling upstream. We got no bites moving downstream. Looper concluded that moving uplake against the wind, waves and current allowed us to move slow enough to give the fish an irresistible presentation. Going downlake, we moved too fast, pulling our baits out of the strike zone before the fish had time to react to them.
In 2008, Lake Fort Smith was enlarged to provide more water for the city of Fort Smith. The dam between lakes Fort Smith and Shepherd Springs was breached and inundated, merging the lakes into one. Of course, the bigger lake still has the same structure and cover. It has more of it, actually, because the deep valley that separated the two lakes is now underwater.
Like in Northwest Arkansas, water is still cold in the Arkansas River Valley, but strings of warm days make the fish a bit more aggressive at lakes Dardanelle, Atkins, Conway and Overcup. Crappie are still deep in the lakes, sloughs and oxbows of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge and the White River National Wildlife Refuge.
Lake Greeson
Crappie naturally orient to cover, so you'll find them near cover in lakes that have cover. Lake Greeson, a scenic, 2,500-acre impoundment of the Little Missouri River near Murfreesboro, has more than 1,000 brushpiles and "crappie condos," which are large bamboo arrangements set with concrete in 5-gallon buckets.
Right now, crappie are most likely to be on structure that's 25-35 feet deep, again near major and secondary channels. The best brush piles are at 25-35 feet with 60- to 70-foot water close, and with 90-foot water nearby.
Finding productive brushpiles used to be by trial-and-error. Modern graphics show you instantly if fish are present. When you find fish on a graph, you can fish it with live minnows or small jigs. A popular method is to drift live minnows over a brush pile at different depths. When a fish hits, make note of the depth to which the bait on that rod is set. If it's consistent, then you can set other rods to that depth.
Lake Maumelle
Just west of Little Rock, off Arkansas 10, is 8,900-acre Lake Maumelle. Impounded from the Big Maumelle River, it serves as the water supply for much of western Pulaski County. It is extremely clear and clean, and it's one of the hardest lakes in the state to fish. It contains a healthy crappie population with many big fish.
As at Lake Greeson and other deep, highland lakes, look for bends in the channels about 25-35 feet. There is a lot of structure at those depths, and that's where you'll find crappie. There's one spot where the channel makes kind of a loop, and the brush is on the inside of the U. Fish can approach that flat from three directions.
The key to catching them is to fish slowly. Your presentation must be precise, but a little sunshine can activate lethargic crappie.
Wind impedes fishing at Lake Maumelle. It is relentless, and you can take a real pounding on even short boat rides. The upper end is usually calm, but you can beat yourself to a pulp getting there. You can also get out of the wind on the north shore. That's where Reese Creek enters the lake, and there's a lot of good crappie cover there.
Refuge Lakes
Crappie fishermen have access to thousands of acres of small, remote lakes in the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges in southeast Arkansas. They're shallow oxbows mostly, and while "deep" water might only be 2 or 3 feet below the average depth, that's still where you'll find crappie this month.
In cold weather, you can catch crappie by slow-trolling spider rigs in the middle of the lakes. A spider rig holds three to five rods and attaches to the bow of the boat.
Spider rigging requires heavier jigs than those used for the cast-and-countdown method. Use ¼-ounce jigs in depths of 6-10 feet. If the water is dingy, try yellow/white or blue/white. Chartreuse is good in clear water. Light line, 4- to 8-pound, is best. Always troll against the wind, just as we did at Lake Shepherd Springs.
Saline River
Small midland and lowland rivers can be excellent places to catch crappie in winter. I learned this lesson on a late winter smallmouth bass trip on the Saline River near Benton. I didn't catch any bass, but I started catching crappie at the far end of the Camp Quapaw Hole, about 1 mile downstream from the Peeler Bend Access. They were thick among the limbs of big hardwoods that had blown into the river, and although I wasn't rigged for crappie, I caught a mess using jigs and minnows with ultralight spinning rigs. When I wore out one tree, I drifted a few yards to the next tree and wore them out there. It was a happy accident that saved a trip. Best of all, the pattern will work on any big creek or small river.