CRAPPIE TIME

[limeyangler]

Hi all,

Living on Wabigoon Lake I have spent a lot of time chasing crappie in the past few years, this year the crappie bite has been slow so I have mostly fished for walleye. 

After good success at Walleye and Lake Trout I headed out with a buddy to try for some crappie. We found an area that we knew held fish in previous years, drilled some holes and despite reservations about being in 19'FOW (usually we go a little deeper on Wabigoon) the fish were there. 

It was not as frantic as it can be, with fish coming through every 20 minutes or so. Some nice slabs but mostly medium sized ones with a few dinks. Nice to get some panfish action for a change, got a plan to try for Burbot sometime in the next week too. 

Ultra lite rod, 4lb fluorocarbon line and a small cast master spoon tipped with a minnow head works for me while my buddy was using a similar set up with a small buckshot spoon tipped with pink gulp maggots. 

I got 10 and my friend got eight. We could have probably got our limits of 15 each but we packed up early as he was on night shift.

 

 

 

[pics]

It's been a while since I have targeted Crappie and I miss it. There was a study on them years ago and the population is susceptible to collapse from year to year. As much as 40%..  The good thing is that they can rebound ..

[limeyangler]

2 hours ago, pics said:

It's been a while since I have targeted Crappie and I miss it. There was a study on them years ago and the population is susceptible to collapse from year to year. As much as 40%..  The good thing is that they can rebound ..

Good info, did not know that. The Crappie in Wabigoon Lake are interesting. I moved here in 2007 and caught my first one that summer, it was a slab of around 14” inches. Growth rates vary from place to place and from source of info too, but after studying up and factoring in the slower growth rates you generally get in fish this far north, I would say that the first one I caught was at least 10 years old. It was not until a couple years later that I discovered how to catch them consistently by accident one springtime. At that point there were very few locals I knew that targeted them or even knew what a crappie was. Once the word got out about 5 years ago they are very popular locally, and people think they have only been here a few years, but unless the crappy that I caught was one of the originals ‘introduced’ to the lake they have been in the lake for 20 years at least. I have heard two versions from 2 separate Conservation Officers , one said they got into the Wabigoon chain of lakes by way of the humble pelican, pelicans find them easy prey when they are shallow in the spring and full of eggs, they consume them, fly to other lakes, take a poo containing in damaged eggs and those hatch. The other version is a local guy, who has since passed away, introduced them illegally in the mid / late 80’s, It could be a bit of both but I tend to believe the latter.