Plugging for Pickerel and November Crabbing

Most crabbers put away their gear long before Thanksgiving, but truth be told there’s often good crabbing to enjoy right through the month in the middle and lower Bay. You’ll need to adjust your tactics a hair but if you bundle up and get some chicken necks, you’ll be in for a meal that no turkey can ever hope to compare with. • The toughest part of November crabbing is securing a bait supply. Most tackle shops stop ordering chicken necks in October as demand tapers off and run out at some point during or before November. So plan ahead, and stock the freezer asap. If you end up desperate to find necks, you can always resort to the grocery store. They don’t all have them all the time but if you hit three or four stores you’ll eventually find some necks. • Look to find the crabs deep. Consider 10 feet the minimum, and often you’ll need to work 12 to 15 feet to find them. If you run a trot line that’s set up for shallow water and has relatively short anchor lines you may need to lengthen them, or risk dragging the anchor a bit every time you pick up the line. • If you’re using snap traps, the method is status quo. But if you’re running a trot line this deep you may suffer from numerous drop-offs, and at times will notice your baits are being chewed up even though you’re not seeing any crabs when those baits reach the surface. In this case you’ll need to slow down and possibly shift into neutral every so often to reduce speed to a crawl, so they don’t drop off.

a plug like a stickbait or a suspending jerkbait can work magic. When the fish are holding in four to six feet of water above remnant weedbed or stumps, consider giving this tactic a shot. 1. Choose a lure in the three- to five-inch range; lipped plugs and lipless will work, but slow sinkers or naturally buoyant ones seem to usually work best. 2. Cast out, work the plug to depth, and give a slow retrieve punctuated with a twitch of the rod tip followed by a two-second pause, followed by a twitch or two, then resuming the retrieve. 3. Fan-cast an area and don’t worry too much about focusing on visible structure. When you’re working over old weedbeds and/ or stump fields, the pickerel are likely to be scattered all around.

Constant prospecting usually leads to more strikes than beating one specific area to death. Remember, 90 percent of the anglers out there release the pickerel they catch. Unless you’re one of the other 10 percent, in this scenario it’s more important than ever to switch your plug’s treble hooks out for singles.

# Don’t give up on crabbing just yet—you can usually still get ‘em in November!

Lots of tactics work when pickerel are the target, but one few people employ is plugging. That’s too bad, because there are times and places when casting or trolling

# Plugs can sometimes fool the pickerel into biting when other lures or even live bait fall short.