Crappie on Fly

***I haven't shared much regarding techniques for quit a while, my recent posts being more about the fish with which I am so enamored.  I'm going to start sharing more specifically what I've learned for the various species I've caught.

We all know fish in different waters can behave differently and have different preferences.  But I think overall this will give folks who want to try for certain species more info that can hopefully get them started off on the right foot, rather than going blindly.  We can all shorten our personal learning curve by first learning from the experience of others.***

This blog post is about Crappie.

Crappie on Fly

I've caught Black Crappie and White Crappie from ponds, lakes, and rivers.  They behave pretty similarly everywhere I've fished for them.  When current is available, they will be near current breaks, in eddies, and near structure (rock, wood, concrete, etc).  In lakes and ponds, during the spawn you may find males guarding nests along shoreline drop-offs, near structure, amongst weedbeds, etc.  The rest of the season, they may be relating to structures like submerged trees & brush, or they may be suspended in open water away from shore.  They often move higher in the water column and closer to shore at night.  During daytime, if shade is available with suitable water depth, certainly give that area a try.

You can cast and retrieve flies, like Crappie Candy and both beadhead and unweighted Woolly Buggers.  If fish are close to shore and shallow, any super-slow sinking unweighted or suspending fly may get bit. I've even caught them on floating patterns like you might use for bluegills (foam poppers and beetles, for example, or large parachute dry flies).

But BY FAR the best technique I've learned (from friend Dale Sanders in Ankeny, Iowa) for catching crappies with flyfishing gear almost any time and anywhere, is to use a microjig under an indicator (tiny bobber).  This allows you to put an appropriate-sized fly at almost any depth (based on tippet length under the strike indicator), and keep it in front of crappie until they decide to strike.  Its exactly what crappie want MOST of the time.

I use a 9' long 6 wt fly rod.  You can certainly go with a much lighter rod... like 3wt to 5 wt.  The only reason I use a 6 wt is because I'm usually fishing in areas where there may be larger bass present, or catfish, etc....and I want to have a good chance to land them if they strike.  For that same reason I prefer to use 6 lb or 8 lb test Fluorocarbon tippet, even though you can certainly catch them on 2lb or 4lb test tippet.  

I like the Fish Pimp Original size football-style strike indicators.  I usually begin setting it at about 20" above the microjig, and then adjust from there based on water depth or where the fish may be located.  In summertime, fish may be 5' deep or more, based on thermocline depth in the body of water.

I like to tie my own patterns on Wapsi Super Jig Heads.  They have stronger hooks than most other commercially available microjigs.  I think 1/64th oz, 1/48th oz, or 1/32th oz with the #8 or #6 hook is about perfect for Crappie.  I've tried different body materials and colors.  Almost anything will work, with marabou tail and some sort of chenille body being standards.  Chartreuse has by far been my best color in most locations.  I've had certain places where olive mylar chenille body has been the best producer, and others where silver metallic chenille body has been excellent.

Here's a few more pics of crappies caught on flies:

Evening Report, 9-28-2011

I managed to get some time to fish last night...from about 7pm until 8:15pm.  It gets dark (not sunset...but DARK) around 7:30pm these days, so the last half the of the time was spent in the dark.

I fly-fished a local public pond.  I had a chartreuse microjig tied on my line, and that's all I used.  I did NOT use an indicator.  There was basically NO wind, and the air temp was around 75 degrees.  The water was stained...since we've had very little rain for the past couple of weeks, I wonder if the Fall "turnover" is occurring?  No wind also meant that the floating algae wasn't pushed up against the downwind shoreline, but was scattered all over.  This was a challenge, and I had to pick clumps of algae off my line/fly often, especially after dark.

There was evidence of large fish activity, mainly out in the middle of the pond.  There was another guy there who was fishing with spinning gear, so I didn't try to chum any of the big fish with bread, although I had some with me, and it would have been a perfect evening for such tactics.  I saw that fellow angler catch 1 medium-sized bass.

The crappies were active.  I discovered they would hit best if I kept the microjig near the surface, which meant retrieving a bit faster than I normally would have.  Maybe this is why I caught 20 crappies, compared to only 4 bluegills and 1 largemouth bass?  Maybe the faster retrieve discouraged the bluegills from hitting?  I'm wondering this, because for most of this year I've been averaging a lot more bluegills than crappies from this pond.

Because of the low light conditions, I didn't take any pictures of the fish I caught last night.  I could have used the flash on the camera, but it tends to wash out the colors on the fish anyway.  No pictures makes for a horribly (visually) boring blog entry, so....how 'bout a picture of microjigs?
I use 1/100oz and 1/80th oz jigheads.  The color I was using last night was a chartreuse marabou tail and chartreuse yarn body.

Mid-September Weekend Fishing 2011

Mixing fishing in-between my kids' extra-curricular activities is the name of the game for 9 months of the year.  I'm pretty good at it. ;o)

Since my wife was still in Belgium, I took my son to a B-day party he had been invited to.  When I got back home, our neighbor's daughter Morgan called and wanted to come over.  Sure!  She hung out with my daughter and I for a bit, then I had to take my daughter to piano lessons.  I told Morgan she could go along if she wanted to...we could try to do a little fishing while we waited for the piano lessons to finish.  She called home to make sure it was OK with her mom.  It was, so off we went.  It was 7:30pm when we dropped off my daughter, plus it had been a cloudy, drizzly day...so it was pretty dark outside already.  I mourn the passing of the long evenings of summer!

I picked a public city park pond that has some lights around it, to help us see.  We just shared one fly rod, since Morgan isn't comfortable casting a fly rod yet.  I would cast out a microjig under an indicator, and she would work it back in.  We missed a lot of strikes, but Morgan landed a couple of crappies.  She was pretty excited about that.  At first she didn't want to take the fish off the hook, but later she let me work the fly in, and when I'd catch fish SHE wanted to take the fish off the hook!  We ended up catching probably 10 more crappies, 1 bluegill, and 3 green sunfish.  The last fish of the night was a BIG CHUNKY Green Sunfish which, compared to the tiny crappies we'd been catching, seemed like a BEAST of a fish!  Its all a matter of "scale".  ;o)

Saturday morning, I took my daughter to Swing Choir practice.  That was scheduled to last for 5 hours.  Morgan came over right after her soccer game.  She played video games with my son for awhile, then she asked if we could go fishing again.  OF COURSE!  My son didn't want to go, he was really into the video game.  We had about an hour before my daughter would be ready to pick up.  Off we went.  It was cloudy and cool.  Fishing was kind of slow.   I took 2 fly rods.  I'd cast one out for Morgan, let her work it in while I cast the 2nd fly rod and work it in.  Morgan had a few hits, but didn't catch anything,  I caught 6 bluegills before we had to go pick up my daughter.

My wife got home from her work trip on Saturday afternoon!  Sunday evening, my son wanted her to play the video game with him.  Its fun to watch for a little bit.  I decided my time was better spent next to some water, so I got permission to go fishing.  I called my buddy Jay, but he wasn't feeling the best, so declined my offer to fish together.  So, I just headed to the closest public pond.  It was around 5pm when I got there.  It drizzled/rained intermittently the entire time I was there.  I fly-fished for bluegills for awhile, and caught some, but it was slow.  I tossed some bread to attract some catfish or grass carp, but only got bluegills to show up.

I could occasionally see the backs of pods of fish out away from shore in one area.  They would occasionally spook, but seemed to remain near the same area.  I put on a soft hackle wet fly pattern, and cast around that area.  I caught bluegills and crappies.  And then a green sunfish.

Crappie on a soft hackle.

As it got darker, action slowed on the soft hackle, so I switched to a chartreuse microjig under an indicator.  I caught mostly crappies on this rig.  I ended up tallying 15 crappies, 8 bluegills, 1 green sunfish, and 1 small largemouth bass for the trip.  I think this was the first trip since early Spring that I'd caught more crappies than bluegills from this pond!