THE FALL BITE IS HERE

Right now, the crappie are scattered and moving into shallow bays following the shad. First find the shad and then start marking brush. Once you have some brush marked you can either vertical fish or what I do sometimes is use a slip-bobber and stay back from the brush. This is especially true in 10 feet or less. Most of the keeper fish I have caught lately has been in 16-18 FOW but with this cold snap crappie will be moving shallower and biting better. With a slip-bobber you can fish any depth brush you find just set your bobber stop at the depth of the brush and cast 20 0r 30 feet and let your minnow sit over the brush which is normally 3 or 4 feet off bottom. You can throw out a marker but if you get your bait in the general area you’ll be fine. These crappie are moving in and out of these brush piles as they migrate back to shallow water. A slip-bobber will also work with a jig, but you might want to twitch it a little. Sometimes just drifting it through will get bites. If you use minnows and want to add some color to the bait you can get some of our Minner Critters to use. They were created for spider-rigging, but I have used them when bobber fishing too and they work great. I caught a few yesterday doing this. Check out the story behind these great minnow rigs created long ago by a man named Jerry Gross a well known crappie angler and was the owner of Meat Getter Jigs. https://ramblingangler.myshopify.com/products/minner-critter

The above technique is one I go to when I just can not get the crappie to bite with casting to brush which is my favorite way. Casting the LiL TUFFY Swimbait to brush piles from 30 to 40 feet away allows you to stay back from the fish. Some lakes like here on Kentucky Lake and especially the bay that I fish most because it is where my dock is, gets a lot of pressure throughout the year. By fall the crappie have been dropped on, casted to, trolled through, you name it they have seen it to include every color in the world. 

The one saving grace in the fall is the crappie instinctively become aggressive feeders and can be fooled. However, there is a time before that instinct kicks in, that crappie are very leary of anything swimming through their brush. When the temps drop and crappie begin to feed up, storing fat for the winter, they will chase a bait a good ways to eat it. I have watched crappie on my livescope come from nowhere and as far as 10 feet and clobber my LiL TUFFY Swimbait as I slow roll it through. This is why I always fish a brush pile even if I don't see a good fish or a fish. Sometimes those big crappie will be laying in there around the base or on the bottom where they are hard to see. I only swim the LiL TUFFY through a brush pile 2 or 3 times. If I got a good presentation and the bait went through the brush if a crappie doesn't show it probably isn't in there. This is especially true for those slabs. They will usually come out to at least investigate the LiL TUFFY and most of the time eat it.

Get out there and enjoy the awesome bite that is about to turn on. High of 65 degrees today water temps drop and this triggers those fish to start thinking about the long cold winter. Take advantage and use one of these techniques to get a few fillets in your freezer for the winter. Tight Lines and remember We Sell Fun One Fish at a Time. Thank You for your business. Ken