Crappie fishing productive during fall at Conneaut
It’s a shame the crappie draws most of its angling attention during the springtime.
While early spring feeding frenzies bring crappies into the shallows — and the annual spawning rite keeps them there for much of the spring season — other times provide productive action. Fall is one of those times.
On many deeper reservoirs — as well as natural lakes — catching fall crappies means finding them in the deep water haunts they live in at that time of year.
Conneaut Lake, a large (by Pennsylvania standards) natural lake in Crawford County, harbors an excellent crappie population. For advice on how to key in on Conneaut’s fall crappies, I spoke with Darl Black, a well-known fishing writer/photographer, and big-time panfish enthusiast.
“Conneaut is a lake where there are multiple main lake basins, separated by various sorts of hard-bottom ridges and humps,” he explained. “Typically, by the time the water temperature drops to the 55 degree range, we can usually find crappies on these deeper humps, as well as main-lake points.”
Though the “sweet spot” depth varies from structure to structure, Black says it’s often in the 25 to 30 foot range.
“It’s hard to say why fish set up at a certain depth on one structure, and a bit shallower or deeper on another,” he added. “It probably has something to do with where the initial ‘break’ occurs along that particular area.
“At some point beyond that first break the structure drops off into the soft, silty bottom. They’ll be set up somewhere between that first edge, and the soft bottom.”
On Conneaut, Black says crappies will mix in with big bluegills, and stay in the same general area throughout the fall. They stay fairly close to the bottom, with the school moving deeper as fall progresses.
During years with a late ice-up, Black has taken crappies as deep as 55 feet in December, fish that had actually moved out over the mud bottom.
“With the crappies in that 22- to 25-foot depth and deeper, we almost always fish with some type of vertical presentation,” he said. “I’ll be dropping a small jigging spoon, or a half-ounce blade bait.”
Though Conneaut crappies will be close to the bottom, Black says they show up well on a depth finder. While schools of baitfish, small yellow perch and broken off vegetation are also prevalent along the edges he fishes, crappies have a different look.
“Crappies will show up as individual fish, rather than just globs,” he noted. “If we’re not seeing individual fish, typically we won’t fish a spot.”
While Black’s comments are specific to Conneaut Lake — a natural lake —many of the same general things happen on clear, moderately deep reservoirs like Keystone Lake.
Keystone sports aquatic vegetation — milfoil, coontail and pondweed — that often grows out to 10 to 15 foot depths. Like many gamefish in the lake, crappies relate to these weeds throughout the summer and early fall.
But come late fall, they’ll often drop down off the edge of weed-covered points and humps, and hang along the ledge, or right in the “corner” where the structure flattens out and gives way to the lake bottom.
Jeff Knapp is a fishing columnist for the Butler Eagle
