Understanding Winter Crappies

With the cold weather now setting in I decided to focus more on ice fishing. Yesterday, I was looking at In-Fisherman and found this article about ice fishing for Crappie. I figured I'd share it with you all. It should help you fish for crappie on the hard water.

Understanding Winter Crappies- In-Fisherman:

Early-Ice Bluegills

We are going to talk about early ice bluegill fishing. This can be one of the best time to target bluegills. Early ice can be right after the ice forms or an ongoing process of ice that comes and then melts and then comes again.
In general, bluegills are good biters during this time. The problem though is trying to find them. You must locate them to be successful. At times this can be hard. You may have caught them last year in a certain area but this year they are no where to be found. Well I am going to share a tip that may help you locate them during early ice. That tip is about fall weather
Not sure when I did but I read some articles that were written by Dave Genz. One of the ones I read was about how fall weather will help you locate bluegills at first ice. One of his articles he stated that if you had a fall with abundant sunshine, relatively warm air temperatures and light winds that dominate the weeks prior to ice-up, you often find good conditions in shallow water that can keep bluegills using healthy weeds long after they would otherwise vacate for deeper water. The opposite can be seen when fall weather is downright nasty. If there was strong winds, cloudy days and colder than normal temperatures, it's common for bluegills to be holding deeper as soon as the ice comes. So do your homework and look back and think about how the fall was. If you are not from that area then ask someone that is from the area about how the fall weather was. I know this is not a guarantee that you will find bluegills by following this rule but it is a good place to start with.


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