On cold frosty mornings, if you’d rather be crappie fishing than sitting by a warm fire drinking hot chocolate, call your local fisheries biologist to learn the least-fished yet productive waters in your area. (Photo: John E. Phillips)
Biologists Know Crappie
by John E. Phillips
Fisheries Biologist Shares Alabama Crappie Secrets
“Ask and ye shall receive,” is part of a well-known Bible verse. We don’t wish to be sacrilegious here, but the fact is, the passage can often apply to crappie fishing.
Various government or even private fisheries biologists are a wealth of information for crappie fishermen. In general, however, the crappie nuggets they know aren’t revealed – until you ask.
A couple of years ago when I wanted to fish for wintertime crappie in west Alabama, I learned that most of Alabama near the Mississippi border, including the Tombigbee River, contained the least-fished state waterways. Not near any population centers, the Tombigbee River’s Aliceville Lake was a highly productive crappie water with a large volume of backwaters. From October through February each year, the crappie held in 4-8 feet of water in the warm backwaters.
When I spoke with Chris McKee, the supervisory fisheries biologist for the Alabama Dept. of Conservation. McKee reminded me of the Maytag repairman as perhaps one of the loneliest fisheries biologists in the state.
He told me, “I only may get one or two calls per year from anglers wanting to know where they can fish at Aliceville and catch crappie. I’ll mark a map to show them where I know some of the best crappie fishing is.”
McKee had sampled Aliceville Lake in days gone by and I was surprised at what he’d learned.
“We found crappie holding in 2-foot water in some backwater areas. So, don’t be afraid to fish backwater regions for crappie all winter long – whether the weather’s warm or cold.
“Current is the main difference (in where to fish),” McKee said. “Fishing the river when the water’s up, and the current’s running strong can make crappie fishing difficult. Aliceville homes numbers of backwaters, with some 12-15 feet deep and others only 3-5 feet deep. The crappie start moving into the backwaters when the temperature is about 70 degrees and hold there all year. If this place has a big rain event, the river rises, the water becomes muddy, and the backwaters will produce the most crappie from October to June.”
How to Catch Winter Crappie
Fish the bottom of a lake with plenty of cover for crappie – Years before I’d gone to the Tenn-Tom Waterway when it was being built in the Aliceville Lake region before the lake was flooded. I walked on what was now Aliceville Lake’s bottom with a forester who was cutting timber. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had asked the timber cutters to leave stumps 3-4 feet high on the bottom of Aliceville to create ideal crappie habitat.
- Pinpoint old river and creek beds that have become backwater areas – McKee explained, “This lake often has floods, and the crappie spawned then will start showing up in anglers’ creels three years later. A three-year-old crappie usually will be more than 9 inches, Aliceville’s minimum crappie length.”
- Know the importance of water clarity to understand how deep to fish for crappie – McKee said, “If you’re fishing 10-12 foot deep with only 1-foot of visibility, then you’re probably fishing below where the crappie are holding. When the river’s muddy, you want to fish about three times deeper than the clarity of the water. If you’ll let your jig or minnow hold in the water about a foot down, and you can’t see it any more, then that suggest you want to fish only about 3-feet deep. Crappie often feed just under the mud line.”
How to Fish Jigs or Minnows in Cold Weather
Most crappie anglers believe that live minnows are best for catching wintertime crappie – and that is often true.
However, fishing live minnows is sometimes slow going, requiring some patience and inability to “cover water.”
Fishing jigs, even if they might not be as attractive to crappie as a live minnow, allows anglers to cover more water to figure out where crappie are holding.
“Some of the best structures to fish around are blowdowns in the backwaters,” McKee explains. “The bigger the blowdowns, the more crappie they’ll hold. You can lower a jig down to the depth where you think the crappie are holding, after noting where you’ve caught your first crappie. Other crappie may concentrate on that blowdown too. Fishing a jig pole also enables you to fish all the way through all the branches of the tree for crappie. You may fish around the tree and not get a bite, but when you fish the best spot, you may catch 15-20 good-sized crappie.”
Fish Attractors
McKee suggests you never pass up well-marked fish attractors. These spots might get pounded by anglers during peak fishing periods, but in the winter, with fewer anglers on the water, they are often ignored.
“Some states like Alabama create fish habitat and mark those spots with buoys. Although many people consider these areas community fishing holes that receive an abundance of fishing pressure, the buoys can be highly productive. The crappie will move into and out of one spot. At a buoyed-off fish attractor, you have a good chance of catching crappie at different times of the day, since those fish attractors are placed in water depths where crappie move up and down on the structure, according to water clarity, temperature and current.”
To catch numbers of big wintertime crappie, talk to your fisheries biologist to learn the best information on the most productive lakes with the least amount of fishing pressure.
Here are more contacts for Alabama Fisheries personnel. Search your state’s fish and wildlife website or other natural resource agencies for contacts close to you.
