Try this ‘glowing’ strategy to catch more crappies through the ice

My knees were starting to bang together. I wish I could’ve pulled the ice hole closer to the little fire I’d constructed but that was physically impossible.

The sun was deep into the high hills and Nature’s next act would be the appearance of dim stars. But just before that the sonar screen lit up like the top of an erupting volcano and I felt the unmistakable rap of a winter crappie on my spoon.

To get that to happen on the ice you have to pick your time and place carefully. Crappies, particularly black crappies, are notorious late afternoon and evening biters. It’s then they leave their weedy pockets, gather in small groups and go on the attack.

Earlier, I’d learned that crappies were lurking, spread out through a weedy stretch – I marked them by placing the transducer flat on the ice – but they wouldn’t eat. Then, as the natural light faded, they regrouped and filtered into the grassy field for a meal.

Along with a friend, I was ready for them. We had placed underwater lights running off a battery a foot or so down some holes. Like magnets, they attracted the larva insects coming off the bottom, then small fish. In turn, the insects and minnows enticed the roving crappies.

I wouldn’t say this is a surefire way of catching crappies in the winter, but it’s the best way I know to get the fish interested.

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Through the ice season, black crappies are going to lurk around weeds and certain types of hard cover. The weeds may be tall and verdant – a real possibility in thick beds – or they may be short and stubby, no more than burnt out cigars.

As for hard cover, I look to docks either permanently anchored to shore or floaters not removed for the season. For weeds, I like wide extensive flats that stretch from 7 or 8 feet all the way out to 12 and 15 feet.

As for docks, I’m not talking about those shallow platforms in only a few feet of water; instead I’m working long docks, usually used by power boaters, that finger out to depths of 5 and more feet.

Unlike when bass fishing, I can’t skip an ice jig under a dock. But I can plumb the depths beside it. I will drill a series of holes tight to the structure and as much as 4 or 5 feet out from the platform.

Sometimes I’ll place a tip-up or two in the deepest area of the dock but more often I’m jigging around the dock and its outskirts.

Then too I’ll set a jigging stick in one of the new ice traps or build a trap with a bucket and such. What’s important is that I don’t make a commotion around these shallow holes. Too much topside activity will spook a crappie to hiding.

Other hard structure I search for is the cribs, platforms and anything else man-made in the deeper water of a lake, say depths of 10 to nearly 20 feet.

Spotting them on my scope, I’ll place static baits or sit above them jigging so that the lure comes within a foot or less of the top of the structure or midway down the sides, if the sides are high.

Just because you see some crappies on the sonar beside a crib or rock pinnacle does not mean the structure is limited to that number of fish. Crappies know the structure is there and will move in and out of the area during the day.

Funny thing is they often move off of these structures in the evening and go on the hunt. Cribs and such are security spots, places where they feel safe from attack, but not necessarily where they find food.

A crib covered in vegetation might be a feeding spot, because of the macro-invertebrate that inhabits the structure, but in so many cases it’s just a bald feature.

It’s good to work these structures for a time but after you catch a crappie or two, they may grow cold. After that, you should work the weedy flats that surround them.

When I fish with one friend, we keep to a plan in which we know there are structures with a good reputation. We set a tip-up or two on top or down the side of a tall crib, then we drill holes leading to and inside the best nearby weedy area.

The crib is used as a beacon to and from the feeding ground. We run a number of glo-lights along the same pathway.

I don’t like to run a light down the exact hole where my line is. Hook a big crappie and it will circle the wire leading to the light with inevitable trouble. I prefer to open a second hole about a foot away from the line hole specifically for the light.

When I have a good crappie on and my friend knows it, he will lift the light out of the water. We do that for each other and know we’ve landed crappies that otherwise would be the casualty of a twisted line.