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