Post-Spawn Bassin’ Blues?

Last weekend I spent a day in the boat with professional bass angler Mike DelVisco. DelVisco is a full-time pro on the Bassmaster Tour as well as the ABA Grand Slam and PAA Tour. In addition to competing, he also conducts seminars at many popular sport shows all around the country. You’re most likely to run into him at your local Texas Roadhouse Restaurant giving away prizes and teaching kids about bass fishing.

For me, late May can be a tough time because a lot of our fish are played out and are in that dreaded post-spawn transition. However, DelVisco and I had a great day on the water. This was due in part to getting to fish out of his brand-new Phoenix bass boat, a sweet ride that’s one of the best deals on the market today, and also because he was able to get us on some good fish.

While I was expecting to fight off lockjaw, he explained that though bass might be off the beds, the local shad population was still at it and that meant post-spawn bass would be nearby and restocking their fat reserves.

“A lot of anglers have a hard time adjusting when bass come off the beds, but a little understanding of what’s going on under the surface can still get you on some fish,” said the Texas Roadhouse pro angler. “Just look for fish to be suspended out off sandy, rocky points in the areas where threadfin shad come in to do their thing.”

DelVisco employed a Yo-Zuri shallow-diving crankbait to mimic the frenzied shad as they headed to the bank. Our day’s bag of largemouth included several chunky males and one big sow that topped the scales at more than 7 pounds. According to DelVisco, capitalizing on the shad spawn is a window of opportunity.

“It’s a daylight bite,” he explained. “Right at first light, the shad will be on the banks spawning, and the bass are right behind them. Sometimes you get bites for an hour, some days two, but once the sun gets up it’s pretty much over and time to go find another pattern.”

Cloudy or windy days that block out sunlight may extend the action during the shad spawn, but don’t expect to get much action if you aren’t on the water at first light or late in the afternoon just before the sun goes down.

For more tips from bass pro Mike DelVisco, check out his bass bytes video series at www.bassbytes.tv

Phillip Gentry

pgentry6@bellsouth.net

 

Picking the Right Docks to Fish

Depending on where you’re located across the country, now is the time most crappie anglers look forward to. Crappie are either just before, right in the middle or coming off the spring spawn. In any case, now is one of the best times of the year to find crappie hanging out around boat docks. However, like most other things in life, not all boat docks are created equal. That bears the question — how do you pick the best dock to fish?

“If I had to pick the most important feature of a boat dock to fish for crappie, it would have to be how close is it to deep water,” says crappie pro Mike Walters. “If a dock has lights and rod holders all around it, a lot of guys always assume that’s a great place to find crappie because more than likely the owner has brushpiles or stakebeds nearby. The truth is, if the dock isn’t located in the right area in regard to depth, all that structure isn’t going to change a bad location into a good spot.”

Walters should know. As a national tournament angler and member of the B’n’M pro staff, he fishes lakes from Florida to Oklahoma, including the lakes around his hometown of Troy, Ohio. One of his favorite tactics is shooting docks for crappie, so he’s learned the hard way how to cull so-so docks from great ones.

“If I’m new to a lake or area of a lake, I’ll take a topographic map and look for places where the creek or river channels move in close to shore,” Walters says. “The dock doesn’t have to have deep water under it but I believe it has to be close by. You can have a great-looking dock way back on a shallow flat and it may hold a few fish, but I’ve never known crappie to travel a long way across a lot of shallow water to get to a dock.”

Once he’s found a dock he wants to fish, Walters pulls out his trusty B’n’M rod. With the accuracy of a Wild West marksman, Walters puts his jig in places most people never fish. But he also has a little secret that helps him both slow his presentation and detect bites when the going is tough.

He uses a grape-sized ice float on the line above his jig. This allows him to shoot docks without worrying about the jig getting hung up in structure under the dock.

“I rig the float like a slip-cork,” Walters says. “Crappie typically aren’t real deep this time of year, so I’ll adjust the stop to just a foot or so up the line. The other advantage is that the cork and jig stay together when shot and then separate once the float hits the water. Crappie are pretty aggressive during the spawn, so detecting a bite is pretty easy. But if the going is slow, watch the cork for any movement that indicates the fish is moving off to the side or coming up with the jig. Leaving it dead still works great too. Sometimes that jig just dangling over a nest for several seconds is more than that crappie can stand.”

For more tips and tactics from Walters and other B’n’M pros, check out the B’n’M website at www.bnmpoles.com.

Send me your fish pictures and stories, I’d like to see them.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

Side Pulling’s Next Generation

I had the chance to get together with a good fishing buddy over the weekend. I met Brad Whitehead a few years ago while working with some of the B’n’M pros, and we hit it off immediately as crappie fishermen and also as friends. Brad is a guide on Alabama’s Pickwick, Wilson, and Wheeler Reservoirs as well as a member of the B’n’M Poles, Vicious Fishing, and War Eagle Boats pro-staffs.

Brad called me earlier in the week to break the news that he was converting his primary fishing style over to side pulling. Side pulling is a tactic made famous by Roger Gant, another well respected Pickwick guide and mentor to Whitehead. Brad offered that while the whole crappie fishing industry was changing over to various long-pole trolling tactics, even after 30 years Gant still caught more fish-day in and day out-than anyone else he knew by using the side-pulling method.

That’s not to say that side pulling hasn’t changed some through the years. A few years ago, Gant went to John Ward at War Eagle Boats and suggested an entire design package for War Eagle’s 754 VS model. This was the boat that Whitehead had this weekend.

“This boat makes fishing so much easier,” says Whitehead. “Everything is laid out within easy reach. You don’t even have to get out of your seat to go from running the big motor to the trolling motor or to put a fish in the livewell.”

Like all heirs to a dynasty, Whitehead intends to put his personal spin on the time-tested tactic. He said he saw a lot of additional potential that would lend itself to other styles of fishing, as well.

“I can pull corks, long-line troll, and troll crankbaits with this setup,” he says. “And there’s some stuff I’ll be doing differently with baits and electronics that I think will be unique to this type of crappie fishing.”

After the weekend on the water with Brad, he had me convinced as well. The frequent cold fronts passing through north Alabama made the fishing tough, but the side-pulling method allowed us to slow down and pick off big spawning fish that were hunkered down around stumps and breaklines.

For more information on War Eagle’s side pulling design, visit their website at www.wareagleboats.com or give Brad Whitehead a call at (256) 483-0834.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

How Side Imaging And Digital Mapping Are Changing The Face Of Crappie Fishing

I’ve known professional crappie angler Kent Driscoll for several years, and sometimes I wonder if he doesn’t have a twin brother. Kent’s one of the busiest guys I know, and he’s a great outdoorsman. In addition, Kent regularly fishes a number of crappie tournament trails and is consistently one of the top finishers. He also attends regular speaking engagements on behalf of War Eagle Boats and heads up the B’n’M Poles pro staff.

One of the ways he stays on top of the tournament boards is by mastering the latest tactics and technology. For example, Kent recently fished and won a Magnolia Crappie Club tournament at Ross Barnett. Barnett is the home lake for a lot of the MCC guys, and Kent admitted he hadn’t fished there in close to 10 years. So how do you show up on the home turf of some of the best crappie guys in the state of Mississippi and beat them on their home lake?

Kent used his Humminbird 997. Now I’ve seen the 997 on several guys’ boats, and I’ve even fished with Kent where he showed me what his could do. At the Ross Barnett tournament, Kent and pretty much everyone else in the field knew that big slab crappie would be stacked up on the ledges and edges of the main Pearl River channel that winds through the fairly shallow reservoir. Kent’s edge came in finding a pattern within a pattern.

“We caught a ton of fish but figured out the bigger crappie were holding on little fingers that stuck out into the main channel,” Driscoll explains. “Then it was just a matter of tracking down those areas — which were clearly visible on my Navionics digital mapping software that’s loaded in the 997. Once we got to an area, one pass down the channel with the side imaging and we could see both the stumps the fish were holding on and the fish themselves.”

Driscoll and his partner then set up to tight-line Capps and Coleman minnow rigs, splitting the ledge with Driscoll’s War Eagle and running one side up on top of the ledge and the other side on the drop. What was the result?

“I caught my first three-pound fish in competition,” Driscoll exclaims. “Add to that another hoss that weighed 2.65 pounds and another five fish that averaged 2.3 pounds each and we had a total weight out of seven fish that weighed 16.18 pounds.”

I’ll have to admit that’s not the first time I’ve heard side imaging and digital mapping credited for winning fishing tournaments.

For more information on side finder technology, check out www.humminbird.com.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

Trying To Reason With March Snow

I had an interesting discussion with Wade Mansfield over the weekend. Wade is the younger generation behind Grizzly Jig Company, the largest crappie fishing supplier in the country. Wade is also a formidable tournament angler and a member of the American Angler pro-staff fishing team.

Wade’s home lake is Reelfoot in Tennessee — the quake lake that’s been touted as one of the most fertile crappie factories in the country. Team American Angler has been trying to get a few pre-fish days in before the next Crappie Masters one-day on March 7. We were lamenting the typical spring patterns where nice warm weather over the last few days had started to warm the crappie fishing up and then a hard cold front like the one that’s just spread across most of the country loaded with snow and ice will be sending the fish deep again. Since 10 feet is considered deep water for Reelfoot, Wade figures they’ll be back to tight-lining near the bottom once the weather clears but hopes the fish will come up again by the end of the week.

That discussion prompted a question about tight-lining for suspended crappie. Mansfield and his partner have had the best success with either straight minnows or jig-and-minnow combos. I asked him how he kept from spooking crappie when targeting crappie that are suspended only a few feet below the surface.

“We really rely on the long rods in these situations,” Mansfield says. “We’ll use up to 20-footers to reach way out away from the boat.”

I thought about my 12-foot rods and how I love to fuss when the line wraps around the tip and I have to hand-over-hand the rod to unwrap the tangle. I cannot imagine handling a 20-foot rod.

“It takes practice,” Mansfield says, but he insists the learning curve is far offset by the reach that was afforded by the extreme-length rods.

“I don’t think many anglers realize how spooky crappie can get when they get shallow,” Mansfield says. “The shadow of a big boat plus the noise and commotion created by the trolling motor will scatter crappie. I’ve seen what happens first hand while scuba diving or snorkeling around the dock, the slap of a boat paddle or any commotion will make them dart off. They’ll return, but it takes a while.”

Good luck to Wade and all the competitors this weekend. In the meantime, I guess I’ll go back to re-lining reels and pouring jigs and hope that the 3 inches of snow we got tonight won’t send us all back to square one.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

Doodling For Crappie

A couple of weeks ago I scheduled a trip to fish on Georgia’s Lake Sydney Lanier. I was the guest of 1988 Bassmaster Classic qualifier Doug Youngblood, who fishes Lanier more than 300 days a year and is just a phenomenal angler.

Lanier is an awesome lake for a number of species of fish. Located on the outskirts of metro-Atlanta, the lake gets a good bit of both boating and fishing pressure during the warmer months. During winter, you’re likely to have the lake almost to yourself.

Doug offered to show me some umbrella-rig tactics for Lanier’s good population of hefty stripers but admitted the bite didn’t turn on until late afternoon after the sun had a chance to warm the water closer to the 50-degree mark. He suggested we spend some time fishing crappie out from under boat docks as a consolation. Some consolation — the cold-water crappie bite was awesome thanks in part to Doug’s knowledge of Lanier’s crappie habits.

We spent the day using a tactic that Youngblood referred to as doodling — a cold-weather trick for spotted bass. A variation of drop-shotting, doodling for crappie involves tying two 1/64-ounce jigs inline on 4-pound test line. For it to work, you basically need to drop the baits on the crappie’s nose.

Lanier has a tremendous, widely underutilized population of black crappie. Most visitors and locals go for either spotted bass or stripers. Since it is located so close to a major metropolitan area, Lanier has a number of large immaculate homes that come equipped with equally large and immaculate boat docks. Many of the docks perch over deep, clear water and provide an ample amount of cover for crappie.

Doodling for crappie involved getting in close enough to the docks to drop the light jigs into the corners and let them sink on a tight line. At 20 feet deep, Youngblood began a
slow-as-molasses retrieve while shaking the rod tip. The bite was mushy, anything that interrupted the feel of the jig was worth a quick snap of the wrist to set the hook. After the first fish, the dense schools of crappie under the dock would turn on and each spot that held fish yielded a dozen or more before the bite cut off. Then it was on to the next dock.

We ended the day with a three-man limit of more than 100 crappie, which is pretty good for consolation fishing.

For more information about Lake Lanier or to line up a trip with Doug Youngblood, contact him at www.fishlanier.com.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

You Heard It Here First

The Crappie Masters tournament results are in from the Seminole County Florida Championship this past weekend, and I want to tell you about the folks who came in 13th place. While that may sound strange, the reason I’m dedicating this week’s column to Mike and Tracy Miller is because they ended day one in 38th place after a day of tight-lining, then completed day two in 22nd place using a variety of the same old tactics and then swapped over to a brand new tactic seldom seen in crappie fishing circles. They jumped 9 places breaking the top 15 and finishing among names that you regularly read about in Crappie World magazine.

What was their tactic? Pulling planer boards. Now part of the reason I’m so ecstatic about the Miller’s 13 place finish is because I received a care package from Bruce DeShano at Offshore Tackle a couple of weeks ago with several pairs of his new mini planer boards — the ones that I’ve been anticipating from this great company for close to a year. The second reason is that I wrote a feature about the use of planer boards about two years ago in Crappie World. When talking with several pros later about planer boards, I got only lukewarm responses about their potential. Now, with tournament results behind them garnering attention, they’re going to be hard to beat and even harder to get.

Here’s how Mike and Tracy Miller from Hermitage, Penn., turned their luck around using mini planer boards.

“Nothing was really working for us on the first two days,” Mike says. “It was cold, and the fish had gone deep. When the tournament switched lakes on day three, we found crappie staging in 4 feet of water along a shelf in clear water. We’ve done a good bit of walleye fishing using Offshore planer boards, and we happened to have contacted DeShano asking about a smaller version of the walleye boards. He sent us several pairs, and we had them with us.”

“There was no way we could get close to those fish without spooking, even using the longest rods we could find,” Mike continues. “We decided to run the boards out there across that shelf by pulling a double-jig setup with two 1/32-ounce jigs on each line. I’ll admit the boards take a little getting used to as far as setting up and getting fish in, but the bite was a no-brainer. The boards would wobble noticeably even when a small fish took the bait. A good fish would pull the boards down and backward, just like the walleyes do back home.”

The Millers maximized the use of the mini planer boards by setting their Humminbird to read 50 feet on each side of the boat. Then it was just a matter of getting the right depth and speed, and they were picking off the big prespawners.

Obviously, there’s more to talk about than I have room here, but Mike also told me he used a simple live minnow on a hook with great results — just like I’ve been telling people for years. Bruce is working on getting the mini planer boards out on the market but said it will take him some time. The best way to get them now is to contact your local Offshore Tackle dealer and have them order the mini planer boards for you. You can also read more about how to use planer boards and where to find a dealer at www.offshoretackle.com.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

The Undeniable Voice Of Experience

As an aspiring crappie angler 20 years ago, I was enthralled after seeing a Bill Dance fishing show where his guest was a little-known Pickwick crappie guide named Roger Gant. Gant had developed a method of trolling that he called side pulling or simply pulling. Gant discovered the tactic one day during a fishing trip with his father when the two of them hung their crappie poles on the side of the boat and drifted while eating lunch. The pair caught fish after fish and changed forever the way Gant thought about and fished for crappie.

Gant still fishes sideways for crappie on Pickwick. Over time he has developed his tactic, which now accounts for a specific boat design offered by War Eagle Boats and a specially designed rod for B’n’M Poles. He and his brother Bill Gant guide almost 250 days out of the year. During a recent interview with Roger Gant, we discussed why he continues to side-troll even with the popularity of tight-lining and other trolling tactics.

“For one, with tight-lining there are so many rods in the water, it’s hard to tell when there’s a bite and which rod it’s on because there’s so much going on in the front of the boat,” Gant says. “I know it works and that a lot of tournament anglers do extremely well with it, but as a guide I have to show my clients a way to fish that’s both easy and fun to do.”

One tip that Gant offered for crappie anglers fishing this time of year is to forgo the use of a minnow on the end of a jig.

“Crappie bite light, light, light this time of year, and they also tend to short strike,” he says. “The jigs we make and use are 1/8-ounce hair jigs, and the hair only extends about a quarter of an inch beyond the hook. Any little bite we see on these sensitive rods is a fish we can catch, not a short strike that only gets the minnow.”

To learn more about Gant’s deadly side-pulling tactic, visit the B’n’M Poles website at www.bnmpoles.com or contact Roger Gant at Superpro Guide Service on Pickwick Lake at 731-689-5666.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

Is It Time To Start Spider-Rigging?

That’s a funny question because to a lot of crappie fishermen the question is more like “When is it not the time to spider rig?” Maybe we should agree on what we’re talking about before we start talking about spider-rigging because the name of this tactic — which probably accounts for more crappie fish-fries than any other — can be a bit misleading.

If you’re a newcomer to the sport and you get out on your local lake and see a boat with rods sticking out in all directions, you’re going to assume that guy is spider-rigging. The name comes from the look of the boat from above — a big-bodied bug with a multitude of spindly legs sticking out in all directions.

The key to what the fisherman in the boat is doing is where his bait is located. If his bait is straight down in the water, directly under the rod tip, then he’s spider-rigging — assuming he has more rods than can be easily counted.

Over the years, true spider-rigging has given way to tight-line trolling. That’s due in part to local regulations that limit the number of rods per angler per boat. Anglers had to choose which three or four rods they wanted to keep and invariably chose the three out in front of the boat because those rods always caught the most fish anyway.

I couldn’t tell you who started the tight-line trolling craze, but I can tell you who made it famous — two guys from the Reelfoot Lake area in Tennessee — Ronnie Capps and Steve Coleman. They have their own rod design made by B’n’M Poles, and a commercially packaged version of their famous minnow rig is also offered through B’n’M for those who want to avoid the trouble of retying while on the water.

“This thing is so much simpler and quicker to tie on than starting from scratch,” said Capps. “There’s no measuring or fumbling around on a rocking boat. Just tie the line to the swivel, unroll it and you’re back in business.”

According to Capps and his partner Steve Coleman, the key to slow vertical trolling is putting the bait right in the fish’s face and being able to detect a bite from the often light-biting winter crappie.

“I want everything as still as possible,” said Capps. “There needs to be nothing to keep me from seeing that bite.”

So with crappie hanging out in the deepest depths of the year, is it time to start spider-rigging? Absolutely.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net