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Crappie Spawn Is Done So Now What?

By Steve Welch

I have been running a part-time guide service for ten years on both Lake Shelbyville and Clinton Lake. My reputation and most of my business is geared toward crappie fishing. Face it, that is what I love the most and therefore that is what I am good at.

Summer fishing for crappies can be hit and miss. They tend to school in open water. Locating schools of larger fish can be difficult, so I turn to white bass and spend a few weeks targeting walleyes.

Once mid-June arrives, you can cruise the flats at Shelbyville, fish the gravel pits at Clinton , and actually call yourself a walleye fisherman. This pattern usually lasts until mid-July when the fish migrate to deeper water. Then I fish the ledges for white bass. They make it much easier to put a lot of fish in the boat and that is why people hire a guide.

I fish the two lakes slightly different for walleyes. At Clinton I have the shallowest humps stored in my GPS. I mark these with buoys and cast jigs tipped with crawlers or Gay Blades.

I also troll crawler rigs back and forth on these shallow humps and make a few passes close to the dropoffs in the gravel pits. You don't need a big bottom bouncer since you are only in six-feet of water. We use a large split shot and fish thirty feet behind the boat.

At Lake Shelbyville , I fish a little differently.

The flats on Points Five and Six, including the rest of the flats that I fish on the north end of the lake, have numerous huge stumps on them. If no boats are around, I will throw six or eight buoys on these stumps. Then I get back about 20 feet and toss a light jig and crawler past the stumps and work it through the roots.

I know this sounds like bass fishing and, believe me, I catch lots of bass doing this. We call them nuisance fish or green trash fish, but they pull too. I caught one seven-pound bass and two carp over 20-pounds last summer using this technique.

I also use the spinner-rig pulling technique at Shelbyville and Clinton. Once again, you are in shallow water so you don't need a big bottom bouncer. This type of fishing lasts six to eight weeks. I usually miss the start of it because I am still crappie fishing.

At Shelbyville, you can run the creeks and catch big crappies until mid-June. I have clients that like to split the trips. We fish for crappies in the morning and then fish for walleyes on the flats in the afternoon after the wind gets on them.

Wind is your friend when fishing shallow flats. I have caught big walleyes in little more than one foot of water during the middle of the day because of wind and boat traffic.

Once the mid-July heat starts to have its effect on the shallow fish, I switch to white bass. Since I mostly catch small fish on the flats, I start to fish the dropoffs.

Dropoffs are where the flat sharply drops off from about 15 feet down to almost 30 feet of water. You can catch the fish up on top one day in about fifteen feet and the next day suspended about 25 feet from the dropoff in open water.

I rely on my depth finder and experience to target big schools of white bass. I know their tendencies and the depths they prefer, so this is where I concentrate my search.

Fishing for big white bass is a blast. I use a spinning outfit with six-pound test and cast a ¼-ounce jig or a Charlie Brewer Slider Grub in either white or chartreuse.

I fish these lures two ways. I cast them on the top of the flat and let them bounce down the flat until they are under the boat, keeping them just off the bottom.

If I find a big school suspended, I let the jig go down to the bottom and then radically jig it up off bottom about six or eight feet and then let it fall back.

The whites are so aggressive that you will get several bites before one gets hooked. It is a tug-of-war on light tackle.

Believe it or not, I prefer to wait until mid-morning because the boat traffic will help push the fish into deeper water and school them up. Last summer I fished the same huge school of fish for two months and caught nearly one hundred during every trip.

Another popular method used for these fish is to use a bait caster and a one-ounce jigging spoon. If you tie a jig two feet up the line above the spoon, you can catch two at a time. More importantly, you can make long casts and relocate the school or troll a dropoff, fishing right under the boat.

Lake Shelbyville is one of the best white bass lakes in the state. There is no size or length limit for them and they can be quite tasty if you use a little extra care when cleaning them.

White bass fishing is also the best way to hook a kid on fishing for life. There's plenty of rod-bending action.

I fish this way until mid-October, when it is time to return to crappie fishing. You know me, the crappie nut!