First it's walleye, then white bass. Now it's crappie that brings excited anglers to waters large and small.
May is when crappie move shallow to spawn and become easier to catch. Any bush, branch or twig in the water is a good spot to cast a small jig or minnow and winch in a crappie or three.
Word from the fishing grapevine late last week is that crappie, one of the tastiest fish in fresh water, are prowling deeper water than usual for the first week of May. As of Friday, the best fishing was still 8 to 12 feet deep. Some crappie are shallower, but they're more scattered. Shallow-water crappie chasers are covering lots of water.
Jigs with some chartreuse in the color scheme are good to use. Mike McBride of Winslow, an ace crappie angler, swears by blue and white in clear water.
At Beaver Lake, most crappie fishing is done south of the Arkansas 12 bridge, particularly from Hickory Creek park upstream into the White and War Eagle tributaries.
There's plenty of crappie on the north end of the lake, too. The mantra of Beaver Lake crappie fishing is that anglers catch fewer crappie on the north end of the lake, but the fish are bigger. That has definitely been the case in May the last couple of years.
I'm fairly new to this Beaver Lake crappie fishing game. Used to be I'd hit the water and try for some crappie. If I didn't catch one in 15 minutes, I'd put the crappie pole away and start bass fishing.
In the spring of 2018 I thought, by golly, I'm going to learn this crappie fishing. Friends would laugh and tell me, "It's not that hard." That spring I left the bass tackle at home and fished solely for crappie.
Patience paid off. I started catching crappie right away, big ones, too, close to my shack-ri-la here on the north end of the lake. Nowadays it's crappie or bust during May.
The saying that fewer crappie are caught on the north end seems to be true. But oh, the slabs we've been catching. A morning of fishing on April 24 near Rocky Branch park yielded just five crappie, but they were all solid 13-inch fish. That's a nice mess of crappie filets.
Crappie must be 10 inches or longer to keep at Beaver Lake. In three springs, I can recall catching only one crappie that wasn't a keeper. Most are 11 to 13 inches long. I've caught two 15-inch crappie.
The tactic has been to work crappie jigs in front of flooded bushes. Crappie bite as the jig falls 8 to 10 feet deep. A jig with some chartreuse in the color scheme works here on the north end, as it does all over the lake. Now and then spotted bass or walleye bite the jigs.
Crappie fishing at Beaver this spring is lights-out good, said Jon Stein, a district fisheries biologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The great fishing is due to three consecutive springs of high water at Beaver Lake from 2017 to 2019, he said. The lake is high again this spring.
High water creates excellent spawning conditions for crappie and black bass, Stein said. Some years Game and Fish stocks crappie at Beaver to boost their numbers, "but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the natural reproduction that takes place when the water is high," he said.
Beaver isn't the only game in town for crappie. Stein said Bob Kidd Lake near Prairie Grove and Lake Elmdale near Elm Springs both have good crappie fishing.
Sports on 05/05/2020