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:

My PB Iowa Crappie on Fly

My buddy Jay surprised us both when he caught a chunky 14" White Crappie while flyfishing a local public pond on March 28, 2020.  A surprise, because it was probably an inch longer than any crappie we'd caught there previously over the years.  It was a really beautiful fish!

On April 1, 2020, I was flyfishing that same pond, solo, late in the evening.  Fishing was very slow, I'd only caught something like 1 small bass, 2 crappies, and 4 bluegills.  And then not far from the location where Jay hooked the 14" crappie, I hooked a big crappie.  After seeing it was a white crappie, I had visions that this was probably THE EXACT SAME FISH that Jay had caught...and how cool that would have been.  But then I measured it...my fish was an inch longer...15"!  To me, it also seemed a bit thinner than Jay's crappie.  Still, a beautiful fish!

My biggest crappie measured 16" and was caught in Illinois.  So this 15" crappie is my biggest in Iowa, and my biggest on a fly rod.  Caught on a 1/80th oz chartreuse microjig suspended under an indicator.

First part of April

The first part of April 2018 was unusually and unseasonably cold.  We had snows, some ponds even partially iced over as late as April 17th!  The pond ice had initially melted off the ponds back just prior to March 3rd!  Lots of days with highs in the 30's and low 40's.  Water temps have been hovering around the upper 30's to low 40's F...compared to last year's water temps of 58 degrees by this time.  So....we've had about 6 weeks of NOT SPRING-LIKE WEATHER!

Now, as of April 19, the extended forecast is filled entirely with hi temps in the upper 50's to mid 60's F.  FINALLY...SPRING!!!!!

But, if there's open water and temperatures above freezing, I am likely to go flyfishing.  As the previous blog entry showed, some decent fish have been caught.  The rest of the fishing highlights from this prolonged cold spell are shown below:

Crappies have usually been hitting well.

13" Crappie...this is the biggest of the year so far.

Some nice bluegills have been caught, although I usually catch so many bluegills I almost never take pictures of them anymore.
This one might be the biggest so far, at 9.25"...I know that might not sound big, but around my area from public waters...anything over 8" is a nice bluegill.

Since my last blog entry, I've only caught one Pumpkinseed Sunfish:

And one Hybrid Sunfish:

I've caught some bass.  No recent ones over 18", but a close one at 17.75":

I don't recall if I measured this one:

These two measured 16" and 16.5", and were caught when it was 37 degrees, drizzling, with an 18mph wind:

The 33" Common Carp in the previous blog entry was my first carp of the year.  Since then, I've landed 3 more....all 3 from a pond where I've NEVER caught carp before, even though I've known they were in there, and I've tried for them.  So far this year, all 4 carp were caught while flyfishing for crappies and bluegills...I wasn't actually targeting the carp, and in fact I didn't even see them before they hit.  So....that's kinda like getting hit by lightning 4 times within a month!  Crazy!
After the 33-incher (from the previous blog entry), the next one (from a different pond) measured 31":

And the next one measured just 25.5" but had an 18.5" girth....so I used the "length x girth x girth / 800" formula to come up with a weight of 10.9 lbs on this one below:

And the next one was really cool too...certainly not because it was big...but because it was a MIRROR CARP!  I think this is my first Mirror Carp on a fly:
(this picture is just two pictures combined of the same fish, of course)

Mirror Carp on a fly, this cute little guy measured just @17".

So....fishing has been mostly decent, despite this long, cold early season.  Its about to heat up...probably rather quickly.  I look forward to seeing how that affects the fishing.

Fishing Report- November 14, 2015

This is a late report...this outing occurred over a month ago.  It turned out good enough that I wanted to include it here in the blog.

Daytime high temperatures had been in the low 50's (F).  Wind was @ 11 mph from the SSE.  I flyfished for 4.75 hours.

Hoping fish might be in the north end of the pond (which should have been the warmest area based on sunlight hitting that shoreline), and the fact that geese had taken over the shoreline around the rest of the pond, I spent my time working and reworking this portion of the pond.

I'm not going to lie.  I struggled for the first several hours.  I used a microjig under an indicator, and could hardly get any strikes.  In the NE corner of this pond, at least 3 culverts direct water into the pond, and at least one of these culverts was flowing pretty good.  I had fished here earlier in the trip with very little success, but on the second try here, I finally found some fish.  Crappies seemed stacked just out from where the one culvert was dumping water in.  They were shallow, I had to adjust my indicator to about 12"-14" above the microjig to keep it from dragging bottom.

I ended up catching 15 Crappies, which is really good for this pond.  I also caught 47 Bluegills!
I flyfished for bass for awhile, but didn't catch any.  A BIG bass did try to grab a nice bluegill I was fighting, but she missed it and didn't reappear.

Despite the really slow start to the day, the 62 fish turned into one of the top 10 best outings of the year!

Also watched a mink foraging around the shoreline and in the water.  At one point it was swimming right towards me and was maybe a dozen feet away, but it dove underwater and swam away when it noticed me digging my cell phone out of my pocket to take its picture.  I snapped a picture of it crawling back onto shore, though.

Flyfishing Report, 10-31-2015

Saturday was cloudy, cold (40'sF), breezy, and damp (it had rained earlier in the morning or overnight).

I flyfished a local public pond.  I had fished it earlier in the year and caught some decent crappies, but in the half-dozen trips since April, I had only caught a grand total of 6 more crappies.  I was worried about the population, and also concerned about all the algae and weeds that had rimmed the pond all summer.

The algae and weeds have mostly died off now, but may decompose over the winter, robbing the water of precious oxygen and possibly causing a winterkill.  I hope my fears do not come to fruition.

The migratory geese and ducks have stirred up the sediment in the pond, reducing the water clarity significantly.

The rest of the story is good news.  I found plenty of crappies and bluegills, and they are in GREAT SHAPE right now....all very chunky and healthy!  I caught one 13" bass, and my "pet" bass...the 20-incher I caught 3 times last year...showed up.  She hung out right in front of me for quite awhile.  Because of the mud stirred up by the waterfowl, I could only see her when she was very shallow, right in front of me.  She gave chase to a nice bluegill I had hooked, but she didn't catch it.  I released a crappie back into the water, and as it swam towards deeper water, she appeared and gulped in the front 1/2 of the crappie, then turned and swam off with it still in her mouth.  Pretty cool!

Pretty much all the fish hit a chartreuse 1/80th oz microjig suspended @ 18" beneath a Fish Pimp strike indicator.

And the pictures:

Late May, 2015

Guys I know are catching Gar, Common Carp, Smallmouth Bass, and even White Bass on flies in my area.  I'm really wanting to catch some of these other species, but I haven't been able to get away to the right waters for long enough.  Or that's what I keep telling myself.

My daughter (oldest child) just graduated from High School with Honors.  She's very smart, we're very proud of her.  So we've been busy with all the activities associated with that and with throwing her a big party for her extended family and school friends.

I've been spending time trying to get the darn Grass Carp to hit some flies, and when that fails (100% of the time so far this year), I flyfish for bass, bluegills and crappies.  At least those last 3 have been cooperating somewhat, although many (especially the larger bass) seem to be preoccupied with spawning rather than eating, and the crappies are finishing their spawn and moving away from shore.

Last Week of March, 2015

I've fished a couple times since my last blog entry.
Had one overcast Wednesday evening at a local pond, flyfished for 1.5 hours, caught 12 Crappies, 7 Bluegills, all on chartreuse microjigs under an indicator.

On the following Saturday, I flyfished the same pond for 5.25 hours during the middle part of the sunny day.  I caught 45 Crappies, 8 Bluegills, and finally caught the first open-water bass of the season.  The most interesting thing to me was, it was a sunny day and the saying goes "Bright Day, Bright Lure".  Typically chartreuse works well most of the time, and should have worked this day.  I caught some on it, but I did a lot better once I switched to a dark-colored microjig.  They really hit it much more aggressively.

The next trip was during my lunch hour on Monday.  It was probably the first 70+ degree (F) of the year, with 20mph winds gusting to nearly 30mph.  I fished a pond close to work.  I didn't do well, but managed to land a couple bluegills. (Fact check...it was NOT the first 70-degree day of the year.  There was 2 days in the 70's and 1 day in the 80's in mid-March....while I was in Europe with my family for Spring Break.  So....Monday was the first 70-degree+ day I had experienced in Iowa this year, but not actually the first.  Capiche?)  :)

Later that evening, the wind died down, so I visited another pond for an hour around dusk.  Small bluegills seemed concentrated near the surface in the downwind ends of the pond...in fact some of them had their backs sticking up out of the water well out from shore.  They appeared to be eating stuff (probably midges) off the surface.  I caught at least 6 Bluegills, but I was really hoping for Crappies.  It was a beautiful evening.

 Then on Tuesday during my lunch hour, I visited another pond.  Algae is already greening up in this pond.  It was tough going, but I managed 4 Crappies and 8 Bluegills on a microjig under an indicator.

Tuesday evening after dinner I had the opportunity to flyfish again at yet another pond.  It was a beautiful evening... 70 degrees F and little wind.  The water in the next pond I chose was fairly clear.  As in most of the other ponds, the fish were in shallows near shore, or suspended shallow over deeper water.  I imagine that very top thin layer of the water column is the warmest water the fish can find right now.  I caught some fish on a microjig under an indicator, but it seemed the fish wanted to eat even more shallow than that, so I switched to stripping in a yellow Boa Yarn Leech, and did ok with that.  I ended up catching 3 Crappie, 14 Bluegills, 5 Hybrid Sunfish, and 1 Largemouth Bass.

That wraps up the month of March.  It started off with a great day of icefishing, and ended with a decent evening of flyfishing....ironically both on the same pond.