Post
Crappie Attack!
Soon now the spring crappie bite will arrive. It might come earlier before later with all this warm winter weather. Lets hope so, ’cause I’m raring to hit Lake Elsinore again. Last year, yours truly got into a hot bite with the crappie even though I was about a week late. The previous week they caught hundreds of crappie, let’s amend that, some guys got hundreds….Those that knew what they were doing. The age old axiom you must follow is to use tackle that works for that particular fishing spot. My first trip was a bust because I insisted on using my traditional yellow and white mini jig. I caught a couple but that was all. After observing what the veterans were doing and using, I came prepared the next week and even though the spawn was over I landed 10 fish close to 2 lbs.
The Lake Elsinore crappie wanted large red and white or green and white jigs. But the answer was to present the bait correctly. The north end of Elsinore is a virtual jungle of tree tops and bushes mostly in the perfect depth of 8 feet deep. The guys that really got them used long 14-15 foot rods, I think they were the telescoping type. They manually pulled their boat around by grabbing the tree tops. They stopped periodically and plunked their jigs down the tree tops fishing the area completely in a circle. Once the bite stopped at each place they moved on another 20 yards or so. These guys absolutely “slayed” the crappie. I saw them catch and release 25 fish in a period of 30 minutes.
I went home with a plan for the next week. Yes, I was going back prepared. I tied up some jigs using the ice jig principle. You know, the jigs they use through the ice in the North. The jig hangs off the line parallel to the bottom and doesn’t dangle with the hook bend down. They worked very well for the ten fish I caught and I didn’t have a telescoping rod. This year I have one. If you are a fly tier this is the Lake Elsinore jig and how I did it.