The Allure of Larger Crappies
Good-sized black crapppie—look at that anal fin—caught in shallows along a Lake Wawayanda weedline.
River Fishing Improved
Once again, I publish an article originally published by the New Jersey State Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs. It’s one that tells how to catch big crappies from March to June. I’m not writing about a recent outing, because I’ve been busy with preparing all our stuff—but what’s in the kitchen and two bathrooms—for a move to a storage facility. We’ve getting all our floors done with hardwood. It so happens that while I published a story about fishing for larger-sized crappies, fishing for crappies at Lake Carnegie in Princeton often gets underway—in March. I’ll say why I mention in a moment.
I’ve been watching the rivers. (One of them flows within walking distance of home.) I see trout fishing has greatly improved over their having been locked in by ice. But I won’t be fishing until only possibly in Princeton. I am definitely bringing a couple of rods, for the Delaware and Raritan Canal and/or Lake Carnegie. Last year, when we stayed in a B&B as our bathroom got remodeled—this is all for my wife, by the way; I could live in a cave—I did some memorable fishing at the Lambertville Wing Dam. Only one smallmouth bass of 15 inches, but that fish made the difference.
Warming Trends
During warming trends this month, crappies will hit jigs in coves and on the shallow flats of lakes like Hopatcong, Wawayanda, Swartswood, Pompton, and Mercer. Spruce Run and Manasquan reservoirs will also produce. A popular method is to fish a jig under a bobber, although slow, sensitive retrieves without bobbers work, too. Crappies grow largest in such big waters as I’ve named, though they inhabit ponds, the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and even streams like Stony Brook in Mercer County have a very few. Average size is about nine or 10 inches, but plate-size 12-inchers are common where the water’s expanse better accommodates feeding habits. Even baking pans of 17 inches or better get caught.
I first got the crappie bug more than 15 years ago while fishing for northern pike in Spruce Run Reservoir during a warm April evening. I retrieved a large, dead shiner, holding my rod to the side and working the tip like I would a jerkbait. When I got hit, I assumed it was a pike. Immediately, I swung the rod forward as I opened the bail, expecting a quick run that would come to a halt before the line would transmit the feel of the jaws on that shiner. Instead, I felt the steady pull of a “bass.” I set the hook and what soon became visible, though, was a very good-sized white crappie. It measured 15 inches and weighed two pounds, three ounces. Without hesitation, I thought of targeting the species.
My son and I, friends too, caught some other nice ones at Spruce Run, but despite my initial rush of excitement over the biggest, they never became a “thing” like pike. Over the years since then, on occasion I’ve caught nice crappies of 12 inches or better, most of them from Lake Hopatcong. Most I believe have been white crappies, although I caught a beautiful black crappie 13 ½ inches long at Waywayanda while fishing for pickerel five years ago in June. I spoke to a bystander as Brian Cronk and I loaded our gear to leave, and he told me that early in the spring, the cove to the left of the boat launch is loaded with big ones. During our outing, we had caught a lot of pickerel, though I don’t remember any in particular. I caught a largemouth nearly 17 inches long I do remember, and yet I don’t remember that fish nearly as well as I remember the crappie. The blackness of it deeply impressed me as rare beauty, but people catch black crappie all the time.
Plate-sized crappie caught on a small plug trolled and targeting the species in May shallows, before too much weed mass developed.
Shallows When Warming
While this time of year you’ll do best in the shallows when they’re warming, crappie make use of the depths at other times of the year. During the fall, when friends and I fish Hopatcong’s main lake points for walleye and hybrid stripers, we catch some, whether by use of Binsky bladebaits or live herring. On a cold November day more than a decade ago, my friend Joe Landolfi hooked a 14 ½-incher, 45 feet deep on a Gotcha jigger fished vertically. They haven’t always been 12 inches or better, but they usually are, though on one occasion while fishing with Fred Matero, the two of us drifted into a school of nine- and 10-inchers 30 feet deep. Friends and I also jigged plastics on Bucks County Pennsylvania’s Lake Nockamixon during November 1977, working 40-foot depths and saving a weekend of camping and fishing from the skunk by catching crappies. We were 16- and 17-year-old victims of musky fever who gave into little jigs we could barely get that deep.
Sizeable Crappies and Trolling
Size would have mattered. It always does. The crappies we caught in Pennsylvania were no bigger than 10 inches. Today, I always smile on those that break the 12-inch mark, less interested in smaller. During the first week of June two years ago, I sought the nice ones exclusively. Kevin Murphy and I had rented a boat from Dow’s Boat Rentals, running way back into the outer reaches of the lake rather than where we would fish in the fall. We began trolling a shallow, weedy cove with pickerel in mind, and although Kevin did catch the first pickerel he’s ever caught, I caught a nice crappie on a jerkbait.
For years, I had caught pickerel, crappie, and one largemouth by trolling that rather expansive cove, and I’ve learned what the hit from a crappie feels like. I missed a few of those hits, when I decided to scale back on plug size. Pretty soon I gave a small one to Kevin, after I had begun catching plate-sized crappies left and right. Not one smaller than 12 inches, but none larger, either. The plug was a little jerkbait an inch-and-a-half long. The name and brand escape me.
It doesn’t matter that, at best, I target crappies exclusively only when I run into a lot of them. Doesn’t matter either that, otherwise, I catch them unexpectedly or target them along with other species. Nor does it matter that I’m not “a crappie fisherman,” because it doesn’t affect my respect for the larger ones, and it certainly doesn’t lessen their allure. While most of the time I’m more interested in running into a lot of big bass—an eventuality that seldom happens, by the way—I have to emphasize that the thought of catching a 17-inch crappie is very compelling, though I don’t see it happening any time soon. I really don’t see it ever happening to me, but it could.
If I were to bet on that outside chance, I’d put my money on Spruce Run Reservoir. Not only did I catch my biggest there; it’s the only place where—besides the state records—I’ve heard about 17-inch fish caught. I sometimes entertain the thought of going back to my shoreline spot during a heat wave in April and targeting big ones. Or doing that during May. I once visited the spot while occupied with a New Jersey Audubon bird outing then, witnessing someone catch a 13- or 14-inch crappie that gave me the clue to the spot’s value beyond northern pike season. The outdoors experience is interconnected in all sorts of ways, not the least of which is finding out about a certain kind of fish, like crappies, by associating with other species or even an entirely different class of creatures.
A 15-inch crappie I jigged in May at Tilcon Lake.
For me, big crappies bridge a gap of expectation. They’re the good fish I catch when I’m hoping for another kind, but the thought of larger than I’ve caught yet isn’t buried very deep. The plate-sized crappies have such an allure partly because catches of very large ones better than 15 or 16 inches do happen in New Jersey. I always seem to be thinking, “You’re getting there,” when I release a 12-incher, and though, as I’ve made clear, I don’t expect I’ll get one of those myself, to feel the allure of a really big one is a privilege.