(With the promise of cold, icy weather upcoming this weekend, I dug through the archives and found an article I wrote 17 years ago about making the most of cold weather.
COLD WEATHER TRIGGERS CRAPPIE BITE
With last weekend’s cold weather with snow flurries fluttering around, the logical spot for most of us was a warm spot by the fireplace with mitts wrapped around mugs of cocoa or coffee.
If you’re a serious crappie fisherman, however, a warm fire and hot mug were the farthest things from your mind. You were probably out on a lake somewhere, bundled and swaddled warmly against the cold that you didn’t feel because you were hauling in slab crappie hand over fist.
The crappie are starting to do their annual thing now that water temperatures are dropping and triggering a chain reaction only serious perch jerkers know about. We picked the brain of one of this area’s top crappie experts, Bobby Phillips, former owner of the Honey Hole Tackle Shop in W. Monroe, who affirmed that things are getting right for the winter-time crappie fest.
“Last Sunday, the surface temperature in the channel on Lake D’Arbonne was 45 degrees and that’s what you look for this time of year if you’re after crappie,” said Phillips.
“When water temperatures start dropping, this sends the shad to deeper water; they can’t stand the cold and the deeper the water, the more moderate it is and more bearable for the fish.
“It’s really not a guessing game; you find the shad and you’ll find the crappie. Just use your LCR to locate the big pods of shad and start fishing. They’re likely to be in 20-32 foot water on D’Arbonne but they could be anywhere in the water column. You’ll just have to probe around until you catch a fish or two and when you hit a good spot, you can load the boat,” Phillips continued.
“If the fish stop biting – and they will several times during the day – try changing colors of your jigs or fish different depths. If they’re still not biting, move around until you find another bunch.”
Phillips said that if you like to fish live bait, you’ll catch plenty on shiners. If artificials are your preference, they’ll hit those as well.
“Jig color that works best depends on the clarity or color of the water. If water is stained, I like to use something with chartreuse in it and I also catch fish on blue colors. If the water is clear, a shad color or something with more white seems to work best,” he added.
Another situation that often occurs when crappie fishing in winter is those periods when the sun pops out and the temperature rises a few degrees.
“The shad respond to the warmer temperature and they’ll sometimes move up in the water column to feed on microscopic matter. When this happens, the crappie will tag along and I’ve caught crappie in the dead of winter on sunny days fishing two feet deep; it just all depends on what the shad are doing on any given day,” Phillips said.
North Louisiana has several lakes that are known as top-notch winter crappie fishing spots. Lake D’Arbonne near Farmerville is one such lake where crappie fishermen gather in hordes up and down the channel. Caney Lake has lots of deep water and some of the area’s best wintertime crappie fishing takes place on this 5,000-acre lake near Jonesboro. One of the more popular lakes for cold-weather crappie is Lake Claiborne near Homer. You’ll know when fishing gets right by observing the dozens of boats congregated just out from the dam.
One of the best things about catching a cooler of crappie from cold water is when they’re converted into golden fillets and served on a platter with fries, hush puppies, a hunk of onion, and a pitcher of tea. It just doesn’t get much better than that.
