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I've been wondering about this, and I suspect I'm not alone. Maybe it is just a tight lipped secret. When it gets dark the crappie move in and stack so thick it sometimes blots out almost the whole flasher. As it gets light they slowly disappear. Well it seems like they disappear. But where do they disappear to? Do some of you actually locate them? Is it just as easy to catch them in the day, if you can locate them? I assume they go way deep, but how deep is way deep?
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I have long suspected that they go to the Shooting Star - just like many anglers do.
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I think you have an excellent question. I've wondered the same since I struggle to get out of bed early enough to hit the AM bite and have too much going in the evenings to get the PM bite. If I can catch them in the middle of the day it would be awesome.
As for "going deep" I'm not sure how much deeper they can get. There may be some deeper water in the Narrows but I can't imagine it's much deeper. Plus I'm not sure how far they will move during the day, but since I'm not catching them I'm clearly not an expert on them.
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[#0000FF]It's a food chain thing. Zooplankton and daphnia (water fleas) emerge from the bottom mud and debris after dark. They form dense clouds visible on sonar. Crappies don't have sonar but they have no trouble locating the "soup" and move in to dine.
When the invertebrates go back into the mud or otherwise disperse, so do the fish that feed on them. Crappies may move into much deeper water...or even suspend at mid depth and remain inactive until "soup" is served again after dark.
Since the colonies of invertebrates inhabit the same mud layers continuously, the crappies return to those same areas to feed. Although the "blooms" may be greater in one area than another...attracting more feeders.
When there are good populations of baby perch or baby crappies...for the bigger fish to feed on...those little ones are feeding on the invertebrates and the bigger fish are there to target the little ones. At that time you will catch more of the larger fish by using larger lures.
We might ask K2Muskie to post the short video she sent to me. Besides some excellent footage of a beer can on the bottom it shows one of those little water fleas rising and falling just above the bottom during the daytime. At night they really get thick, and show up as a line on sonar.
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Last year it seemed like they would move in to shallower water (25') at night and then head deep after sunrise...
This year they seem to be holding at the 40' -45' all of the time. They seem to hug the bottom more during the day and suspend up as much as 15' at night...which kind of follows the food source.
No doubt they hit better at night, indisputable fact there....but you can catch them all day...we do it all the time.
Size WAY down on the bait - Tungsten teardrop with 1/3 of a mealworm is perfect. Present it slow...and most times you set the hook on line movement...even with a spring bobber most bites are "lifts" of the line.
I will be there tomorrow to hit the morning bite but if needed i will fish into the sunlight no problem.
One other thing. Most nights the fish are stacked 15' up from the bottom, i have really tried to fish the layers to understand where the big fish are in the "stack". Without question the top layer of fish are the larger fish. In fact i drop right to the top of the stack and work the jig up a few feet...this brings up the most aggressive fish and usually it is the larger ones.
Started doing this because culling through Crappie brought up from 45' isn't an option. They are committed to the bucket at that point because of the air buildup....You cannot release a Crappie from that depth...so you have to make sure you are hooking up with the best 20 that are down there!
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Great responses everybody! I have found they act a whole lot like perch, in the day time, but there are just so many more at night time. Somewhere out there, there is a pile of daytime crappie!
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Hit the narrows from 9 to noon today. Action wasn't fast and furious but there were streches where the bite was pretty steady. Did bring home quite a few (even though I got totally out fished by my 14 year old son). I guess you can catch them during the day if you can find them.
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Good question, and all I have to add is that there is some pretty deep water in PV. I know it's down in level, but I caught some nice perch off Cemetery Point a good walk to the west toward the narrows in 68' of water.
But, I kind of think the crappies do something different, like disperse widely and suspend at a certain depth.
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