2/1/07

Weather or not – it’s crappie time at Santee Cooper
By Terry Madewell

Terry Madewell Photo

There are several sure fire signs that spring is coming ... redbuds, dogwoods and a happy angler with a stringer full of crappie.

Some things are inevitable and the approach of crappie fishing season is one of them. Regardless of the rain, wind and cold we’ve suffered recently while on the lakes, the crappie are getting ready to do their spring fling.

While water temperature will ultimately play a role in exactly when the spring action gets hot, rest assured that big female crappie are already getting laden with roe and are beginning to stage in the pre-spawn areas.

The facts are these. I saw a cooler full of slab crappie last week and as they say, the proof’s in the puddin’. I also rely on the redbuds that will soon begin showing their color in a few weeks, and it won’t be all that long before we see the brilliant dogwoods. But the pre-spawn gathering is beginning now in the deeper water areas of our lakes.

Put them all together and it can only mean one thing, “crappie run.”

Yes, folks, it’s that time of the year again and it seemed like it would never get here. The occasional warm snaps, intermittent with torrential downpours, arctic blasts and scattered snow had gotten my fishing fever down.

But, after all, it’s now February, and the natural instinct to propagate the species has begun to put the crappie on the move. From the reports I’ve been able to garner during the past few days, the catch rate is improving and more and more boats are beginning to be seen in and around the lakes, with crappie catching on the angler’s mind. This is not only occurring at Santee Cooper, but at other South Carolina lakes as well.

Years ago when I first moved to the Santee Cooper area, I asked several folks about the best indicators to good crappie fishing, and I received the same answer from all, quite an accomplishment from a bunch of fishermen. The pat answer was to study the mouths of the creeks, where they entered the main lake, beginning in January and February. As long as there were only a couple, maybe three, boats in each area, the action would be slow. But one day instead of a handful of anglers, the same spot would be walltowall fishermen.

Word travels fast among crappie anglers and if you were watching the creek mouths on a regular basis you would, one day, see perhaps twenty boats where there had previously been only two. If you went home immediately, hooked up the boat and went fishing, you would have already been late, but not too late to cash in on the great spring crappie fishing we have at our disposal.

Once the action begins, the word spreads like wildfire and overnight the crappie angler population will increase tenfold.

Tackle shops are sometimes caught unprepared for this mass movement to the lake and watch as their minnow supply runs dry. Not only does the number of anglers increase, but overnight, the anglers change from buying three dozen minnows each to purchasing them by the pound.

The fish will eventually be migrating to the shallows in search of spawning sites and seldom linger too long in the same spot. When they congregate, en masse, at the mouths of the creeks, they tend to stay there for several days, perhaps as long as three weeks, depending on the prevailing weather conditions. If we have a series of fronts and colder weather in January and February, the movement to the shallows will be delayed and the fish will generally stay bunched up in the creek mouths longer. If the weather breaks into spring-like conditions and stays that way for several days, the water temperature will warm quickly and the natural instinct of the fish will be to scatter towards the shallow water.

One of the reasons the early season “crappie run” is so popular is the equipment needed to be successful can be as simple or complex as an angler wants it to be. Some will use their depth finders and graphs to pinpoint a bunch of fish, then anchor and cast jigs or minnows to the fish.

Others prefer a more simplistic approach, which is also extremely effective. Drifting live minnows just off the bottom is a time tested producer with Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion crappie. The action you’ll encounter while drifting will vary from day to day, and even from one drift to the next.

Sometimes you’ll pick up crappie on a regular basis, every few minutes. In some instances though, you may hit a hotspot and hook a fish on every rod at the same time. Then you may drift another 15 minutes or more without a strike, before hitting another hotspot.

Although it may not appear to be so, anglers skilled in the art of drifting have a definite method to their madness. They don’t simply drift haphazardly hoping to luck up on some unsuspecting fish. Each drift is designed to cover a particular section of water, and once fished the spot is not re drifted unless the action was good enough to warrant it. By changing drifts, they will search for crappie in various depths of water in different spots, until they determine the most productive spot for the day. Then they’ll just about wear a path through the water drifting the same spot over and over until they have their limits.

Try the February-March season crappie this year, and don’t automatically figure the fish are going to be shallow. Crappie, like any other fish, are where you find them. And my favorite way to look at them is when they’re laying the bottom of my cooler.

That’s one fishing indicator that never lies to you.