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