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