By John Phillips
Jim and Barbara Reedy, a husband-and-wife team from Charleston, Missouri, have tournament crappie fished for two decades. These two crappie fishermen also travel to about 20 tournaments each year all over the nation from Florida to Minnesota. “We like to travel the country, meet new people and learn a lot of new crappie techniques,” Jim Reedy explains.
At this time of the year, the water across U. S. lakes is from warm to hot, and most fishermen think the crappie will be deep. We have found that the opposite is true. We’ll often locate our crappie in 5 to 10 feet of water, or less. We’re looking for big balls of schooling shad. Any place we can find the shad surfacing or running the banks, we’ll generally pinpoint some crappie fairly close to those schools of shad. We may be fishing over 18 feet of water, but perhaps we’ll be catching crappie at 7- or 8-foot deep. Sometimes we’ll find the shad close to shore, and we may catch crappie in 5 to 6 feet of water. We’ll slow-troll with 12-foot rods. We prefer the Capps & Coleman Double Minnow Rigs and usually fish with live minnows, although from time to time we will fish with jigs tipped with minnows. Our favorite color jig is blue and chartreuse.
To learn more tips and tactics for catching crappie in the spring and summer check out Crappie: How to Catch Them Spring and Summer – http://amzn.to/WGaJLT available in either eBook or print book formats.
