From Crappie World Magazine
Coves & Creeks Have One Thing

In Common Plenty Of Crappie
By Philip Gentry

Warmer water and longer days trigger activity not just below popular crappie lakes but also above them, as anglers shake off the winter blues, grab their rods and load up their boats. Of course, finding fish now, or in any season, can be a difficult task, especially on larger reservoirs. However, veteran crappie anglers know where to go. They head for the creeks.
Creek arms can vary in size from small, narrow funnels to massive bays that are as big as some lakes. They can have secondary creeks or one large channel, but they all have one thing in common this time of year — crappie.
“Fish use creeks not just as migration routes in and out of spawning areas but as staging areas before and after the spawn and during the colder and hotter months as well,” says Billy Blakely, a Tennessee crappie angler and owner of Reelfoot Lake’s Blue Bank Resort.
In other words, the crappie use them all the time.

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The Perfect Creek
Arkansas professional bass angler Mark Rose fishes for crappie as much as he casts for largemouth bass. When he visits a new reservoir, he will study a paper map or he’ll download a map of that lake into his depthfinder and look for creek arms. Productive crappie reservoirs will have fish in virtually every section of the lake, so Rose is less concerned about choosing the right creek on his initial search than finding one that has a few key ingredients no matter where he’s fishing.
“The best thing I can see is a long creek arm with a very defined, narrow channel that runs the entire length of the creek all the way out to the main lake or main river channel,” says Rose. “A longer creek gives me more options. It will probably have more fish to begin with, and if the channel is out in the middle of the creek arm itself, there’s a better chance they haven’t been worked over hard by other anglers. If the channel swings close to shore and that bend has cover on it, you can be pretty sure it’s been fished hard on the more popular crappie lakes.”
Blakely also likes to find spots that aren’t too obvious. As a crappie tournament angler, he needs every untapped spot he can get. Even when he isn’t fishing for money, Blakely says schools that haven’t been worked by other anglers give up bigger fish.
“Everyone beats the cover that is visible above the surface,” Rose says. “I want to find the stuff that you can’t see without a good depthfinder.”
To both Blakely and Rose, the perfect creek channel has at least a few defined bends because that’s where crappie tend to hang out when they aren’t in shallower water. The actual depth of those bends doesn’t matter too much to Rose, but he says crappie do tend to favor a specific depth on a specific lake at certain times of the year.
In other words, crappie in March in a stained lake will often be in 8 to 10 feet of water, while fish in a clear reservoir will be much deeper. Of course, as the seasons change, the fish move shallower or deeper. In order to find those fish, Rose has to probe plenty of different depths.
Once they enter those creeks, Rose and Blakely will go in opposite directions before they begin their initial search for crappie. Rose typically heads to the very back of the creek, idling right over the deeper sections of channels as he studies his depthfinder and looks for both cover and baitfish. As he gets shallower, 6 or 8 feet in most situations, he’ll move off to the side to avoid spooking fish. Once he reaches the back, he’ll turn around and start fishing his way back out if he sees what he’s looking for.
“If I don’t see baitfish, I will either go look in another creek, or I won’t spend much time fishing in that creek,” Rose says. “To me, the presence of shad is as important as pretty much anything else, because crappie need to eat a lot this time of year. I usually find crappie if I find shad.”
Blakely agrees that the presence of bait is critical to success. Spring crappie are especially active and need to eat lots of food.
“Crappie won’t always be directly under a school of shad, but they probably won’t be too far away,” says Rose. “I like to see tighter schools of shad right over the creek channel, as opposed to loose bunches scattered throughout the creek, because that tends to concentrate the crappie.”
Blakely, however, starts at the front of the creek, unless it’s late in spring. He’s confident the fish will be on shallower cover and in the upper ends of long creek arms.
“That’s just how I do it,” he says. “There’s no rhyme or reason, but that’s just what’s worked for me over the years.”
Blakely has found that crappie not only favor bends in creek channels, but that they also prefer those channels with sharp edges with a hard bottom adjacent to the channel. He says the channel itself is often filled with soft mud, a result of the natural sedimentation process, but the edges will usually be firm. If those edges have cover on them, he’s confident crappie will be on them or at least nearby.

Fish It All
If Rose isn’t on a distinct pattern where he can locate fish in a hurry, he simply drops his trolling motor and goes on a fish hunt. In winter, early spring and summer, crappie often will be in the exact same spots in that creek channel day after day, and catching a mess can be as simple as going back to the place that gave up fish the previous day or even week.
Rose and Blakely agree that crappie will continue to replenish those spots so there is little chance of depleting a school through regular pressure. As the water warms, however, those fish will start to move, making them tough to locate. That’s when Rose and Blakely go fishing, covering lots of water in their initial search for slabs.
“If they aren’t in those creek channels, they’ll be close by,” insists Blakely.
Both anglers look for flats adjacent to those spots that held fish prior to their spring movements. Ideally, those flats will have cover on them. Stumps, planted brushpiles or stakebeds, or even boulders will all hold fish. Blakely and Rose make sure to take at least a few casts to each piece of cover.
If there are no obvious flats, Rose looks for long tapering points that are created by a strong bend in the creek channel. Points are ideal because they give crappie the freedom to move up and down the water column without having to travel far. Like any structure, the perfect point will have at least some cover on it.

Best Baits
If the fish are still in the creek channels, Rose will spider-rig as many as 12 rods in order to cover lots of water and a range of depths. By using that many rods, he can find fish in a hurry and eliminate water that is void of crappie.
Like any hard-core crappie angler, Rose uses different baits on several rods to figure out what the fish want that day. He and Blakely claim that a color or style of bait that worked one day may not work the next.
Once he locates fish or figures out a pattern, Rose will often switch to a 10-foot jigging pole. He’ll use that to lower baits to pinpoint locations where he’s located fish.
“If I’m looking for fish on the banks or in real shallow cover and I haven’t figured them out or if the fish are scattered, I’ll throw something like a Strike King Micro-King spinnerbait or a Strike King Bitsy Minnow crankbait,” says Rose. “I can cover lots of water with both of those baits. Once I figure out where the fish are and what they want, I can slow down and work similar areas in other creeks with a slower presentation.”
Blakely favors live minnows for virtually all of his crappie fishing, but he’ll sometimes try a small crankbait on a dropper rig when he has marked fish close to the bottom on his depthfinder. He also uses double-minnow rigs to probe two different depths.
Like Rose, Blakely likes to spider-rig as many as a dozen poles. He uses different lengths, but he prefers 16-foot rods so he can cover a huge swath of water as he works his way down creek channels.
“I’ll set the ones in the front to cover down in the creek channel and the rods off to the sides so they cover the edges of the channel without dragging bottom,” notes Blakely.
It’s difficult to keep the boat directly over the channel, and it can be equally frustrating to keep each rod at the perfect depth, but it’s certainly worth it. Once Rose and Blakely figure out exactly where the fish are and what lures they prefer, catching crappie in any creek can be a snap.



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