From Crappie World Magazine
5 Action-Packed Warm-Water Hotspots
Story and Photos By Vic Attardo

In the tepid water of summer, crappie are often scattered and residing in a wide range of
locations. In fact, the list of places where you won’t find summer crappie is much shorter than where you will.

Yet if there is one definitive thing to be said about hot-time calicoes, it’s that the fish will seek out cooler, more oxygenated water wherever it might be found. The difference between a lake’s overall temperature and a place crappie consider idyllic may be just a few degrees. Nevertheless, it’s an important variation.

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During the height of summer, the most common settings for cooler, better water are under shade, around current, in deeper water and a combination of some or all of these places. Actually, this diversity sets up even more locations where hot-weather crappie might lurk.

Here is where a few top guides, professional crappie anglers and great local fishermen say you can find summer crappie.

Under Bridges
“If there is a perfect place to find summer crappie, it’s under and around bridge pilings,” says Kerr Reservoir guide Dave Tatum. “Bridges provide at least two things that crappie love at this time of year — shade and deeper water.”

Some bridges also offer a third highly attractive condition — current. Shade, deep water and current all combine to supply the silver-sided fish with better conditions.
“There’s another thing that makes bridges good,” Tatum says. “The shores are covered with riprap, and the jumbled rocks hold bait. Crappie know that.”

One of the best spots for bridge-holding crappie is where the outer edge of riprap meets the deepest water. Crappie are always keeping an eye on the stony edge. If they see bait, they go get it.

In addition to shade, there’s usually current under a bridge. Bridges typically partition sections of a lake, and the water moves back and forth between the divisions.

Tatum positions his boat to take advantage of the shade, deep water and current. He keeps his craft behind the flow so that when he drops a jig into the bridge shade, it drifts back with the current, not against it.

Stakebeds
Standing in open water, a man-made growth of wooden or plastic poles doesn’t look as if it would produce much cover, but Pickwick Lake pro Brad Whitehead says when there’s not much else around, stakebeds are the summer crappie’s best friend.

“Stakebeds attract crappie,” Whitehead declares. “There’s no doubt about that. When you drive the beds in proper places, they can be a magnet in summer.”

Even when you look at a well-made stakebed, there doesn’t seem to be that much shade around the individual poles. However, underwater, the tight conglomeration of sticks creates a patchwork of light and dark. Frankly, you won’t find it cooler inside an open-water stakebed, but crappie use the beds as a respite from the summer sun and to ambush prey.

In addition, aged stakebeds are covered with vegetation, which in turn attracts aquatic insects and minnows, all of which are on a crappie’s menu.
“Shade around a stakebed will move with the position of the sun,” Whitehead notes. “At times, different spots of a stakebed will produce a couple of crappie. At any time, it might be in the center, to the left edge or the right edge. It just changes.”

From a boater’s position, the best location in a stakebed may not be obvious, so it’s important that an angler work the entire bed. However, it soon should become clear which position the crappie are temporarily favoring.

“Come back in an hour, and that location may be entirely different,” Whitehead says.

Deep Water
During a hot Pennsylvania summer on a big lake, crappie face two unpleasant conditions — heat and boat traffic.

“We’re up a little higher in the mountains, but in summer our lakes get just as warm as those down South,” says Brian Aldis, a Pocono-area guide. “This is a tourist area, and from Memorial Day to Labor Day, it’s like a speedway on our larger lakes. Put that together and you’ll know why crappie hate our shorelines and shallow water.”

Aldis believes that to catch crappie during the daytime on places like Lake Wallenpaupack, a 5,700-acre impoundment carved out of the Pocono substrate, you have to go deep.

“I’m working deeper than 20 feet, often between 25 and 30 feet,” Aldis notes.

Fortunately, Wallenpaupack does not develop a harsh thermocline that might act like barbed wire to most fish, crappie included. Without the temperature barrier, these big-lake crappie go down deep.

“The great thing here is that we have some incredible structure at those depths,” Aldis says. “Wallenpaupack was flooded over farms and rural housing, so you still have stone fences and hard foundations. Also, this was rolling land, and there are humps and folds everywhere. I’ve found the old man-made structure has some of the best lines for crappie, but you can’t rule out a ditch or swale that will be down there forever.”

To work these deep-water crappie, Aldis uses horizontal techniques such as Carolina-rigging a tube or Carolina-rigging a small crankbait.

“Early in the morning or late in the evening, you can pick up crappie in weedbeds between 5 and 15 feet, but if you want fish here during the day, you have to go deep,” he says.

River Current
Not to be neglected during summer are river impoundments. The major tributaries of the Mississippi River, whether they’re up north in Ohio or down south in Arkansas, are dammed and can be fished like lakes, except that when the gates are open for navigation or flood control, current is created. Crappie don’t hang around the gates like spotted and largemouth bass, but they’ll gravitate to more confined places where moving water creates currents.
Slots between islands, wing dams, shorelines brushed by current and many other current-related spots are favored by Arkansas angler Teddy Phillips.

“I just keep looking and looking until I find places where there’s current, and that’s where I go,” Phillips says. “Because the water level is always changing, the places that worked yesterday or even an hour ago might not produce at the moment. It’s almost like fishing tidal water.”

Phillips has found that the best spots are often in eddies beside the current, not in the current itself. To demonstrate, he circled around the downstream point of a thin island and angled the boat’s bow into the tide. He tied on a lipless crankbait and made the first cast on the outside edge, the fastest water of the flow. Nothing happened. Then he worked through the center of the current with a cast or two. Again nothing happened. However, when a cast was made between the current and a drop-off at the island’s lower point, the rod tip dipped with a solid connection. At first, the fish darted toward the bank eddy with its tangle of exposed roots and branches, but then the crappie thought better of this maneuver and headed into the current and deeper water where it was no trouble to land.

Time after time, Phillips plucked crappie from the inside lane of the flow, and each crappie made the same beeline into the current.

“When the current stops running, the bite will die off,” Phillips prophesied.

Sure enough, when the gates were closed, the crappie stopped hitting.

Tupelo Honey
In large, flooded areas, deep water is either at a premium or just non-existent. In this situation, crappie have to find cooler water wherever they can. In the Deep South where tupelo and cypress trees form primeval forests above dark, stained waters, the shade created by the roots, wide trunks and overhanging branches give crappie what they need — slightly less sizzling surroundings and a good ambush point.

Tommy Travers lives beside a dark Louisiana swamp dense enough to make a keen location in a horror movie. Using his johnboat, old Johnson outboard and an 11-foot push-pole, Travers maneuvers around the thick tangle of tall wood. Actually, he mostly fishes near the outer edge of the snake-infested jungle and not as far back in the swamp as you might think.

“These crappie don’t like the deep dark, and they don’t like it real shallow either,” Travers says. “They like being close to open water where the trees aren’t, but also they want a bit of cypress for cover.”

With eagle-sized mosquitoes taking almost as many bites as the crappie, Travers worked back from the edge of the jungle. At any one time, the stern of his long johnboat was in the sun while his cane rod tips hovered in the shade. Using a spider-rig brace in the bow, he offered the crappie a direct vertical presentation with no more than 6 inches of heavy line dangling from the cane.

To attract his target, Travers doesn’t mess around with fancy jigs and plastics. He buys a bag of lead-colored jigs and sprays them black or white. He also captures his own minnows in a cage full of fish-fry breadcrumbs hanging from a dock.

On this trip, Travers carefully worked around cypress knees and tupelo trunks. He often moved his boat by reaching out with his hand and slowly pushing off. He allowed this ambling drift to guide him to his next target.

At one ancient cypress tree, Travers became quiet. He then dangled the bait in a notch. The pole bent dangerously low to the water. Without giving the fish a second to react, Travers yanked high a 15-inch crappie better than 2 pounds.

“That’s what we came for,” he said.

By the time he was finished, Travers had pulled up two more equal-sized fish in the second line of flooded roots. He also caught and kept a number of 11- and 12-inch crappie, but every one of the bigger fish went back to their homes.

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