ON THE HUNT FOR SPECS

By: Chuck Mason | Michigan Ice Team Pro

Where do they come from, where do they go? A fun song or a method to the madness that is crappie fishing. Everyone says that crappie fishing is at it’s best in those first few hours of daylight in the morning, and they are not wrong. Much like walleye fishing at the crack of dawn, there is not much more out there in the world of ice fishing than watching a crappie scream up the column on your Vexilar, racing towards your presentation get you fire up.

Specs are a common term in Michigan for the Black Crappie we have, and they are a panfish favorite here for their aggressive behavior while searching for food. As I mentioned in opener, there isn’t much while fishing through the ice that will get you to catch your breath as watching these fish charging your bait. Not often thought of as a predator, crappie are voracious eaters and they do not slow down once the lakes get covered in ice.

After fishing for them in five states across the Ice Belt during tourney seasons spanning the last 18 years, you either pick up on some of their habits or go bucketless while trying. Much like other predators like bass and pike, crappie often have their own travel spots that they make during the day, They start “at home” in the morning and begin their daily routine.

At each key spot of their travels I will have several presentations rigged up at the ready, to meet any curveball they might throw at me. During tourneys, that could mean as many as 30 rods rigged if there was a sight fishing bite going on too. Typically I am a live bait diehard, tried and true, nothing (too much) new kind of angler. That said, I have been using plastics as early as 2002 when a company out of Wisconsin became the first to really revolutionize rubber baits, and we started calling them soft

plastics. Finally a plastic that didn’t just hang on the hook, but actually moved or wiggled with the action an angler provided by the cadence of the rod movements.

Typically those fish in the morning are so aggressive that I will pass on the live bait at first and drop down something to match their aggressive behavior. This is also the only time of the day where I will use a spinning reel on my rigged up combinations. Do spinning reels create more line spin, definitely, but with those big fish ready to strike first, I am not willing to take any chances. Besides, I have not created any spin….yet. Presentation wise, it is go big, or go home, and will drop down a glow jig, like the glow red Drop Kick from Clam’s CPT lineup, matched up with a glow red/ pink Maki soft plastic presentation and be aggressive.

The morning bite has slowed down and you start to think, where did they go? By looking at the Navionics app on my phone I can search for clues, or more precise, travel patterns. Natural type runways that the crappie might follow to their next destination, and by that, I mean where are they going to eat next. I look for deep troughs, or drop-offs along contour lines where they can travel away from weedbeds, in relative safety from fish higher up on the food chain.

Normally I would run a spoon, tipped with a minnow head, waxies or several spikes, but that has been done to death and everyone knows it, so will toss in one of those curveballs mentioned before. The night before the tourney, temperatures dropped 25 degrees, and the barometric pressure crashed. Time to go a little old school, Michigan style in 22 foot of water.

I had found these fish prefishing for a tourney in Wisconsin while there was a stable front that had

lasted three or four days. Those previously mentioned screamers were launching off the bottom and snatching baits at 12 foot on the drop. At that point line twist is not an issue because the baits never had a chance to settle at the depth I was going to target. Sunday morning rolls around and nothing is happening. Even with the zoom feature on the Vex it is hard to tell whether they are still there or not. This is where my “Michigan” kicks in and I pull out a combo with a Schooley on it, the original straight line reel, time to go into ultra finesse mode. Down the hole goes the 2 pound test tied on with a 2.5 mil jig with a size 18 hook, with a single spike threaded onto the hook.

Pounding the bottom is something you normally do while chasing bluegill and not crappie, but it was time to pull out all the stops. Specs are not often thought of as bug eaters but they were holding tight with the temperature and pressure drop. After smacking the bottom, you could only lift it up a few inches, these fish were not going to come above their eye level. You also could not wait for the tell tale sign of the spring popping up with the

MUCH LIKE OTHER PREDATORS LIKE BASS AND PIKE, CRAPPIE OFTEN HAVE THEIR OWN TRAVEL SPOTS THAT THEY MAKE DURING THE DAY, THEY START “AT HOME” IN THE MORNING AND BEGIN THEIR DAILY ROUTINE.

in their mouth and line became weightless. Set the hook and reel them up.

The point of this tale is stress the fact that these fish can migrate throughout a lake as the day progresses. Stay on top of them, they did not quit biting, they just moved on to the next feeding ground that they frequent each day. Look for natural highways where they might travel in between. Most importantly, don’t get frustrated when conditions change, they are still there, you just need to change your approach to continue your successful.

bite so you had to use the tightline trick of occasionally dropping the rod tip down to see if the line bunched up in your hole. The point here is that the specs had the jig