Casting is a different set of rules when it comes to winter crappie,as stated they are still deep.To find them I had rather cast into swallow water and let the lure fall though the water colum all the way to bottom.If no takers I crawl it a few inches before I hop it off bottom 1 to 2ft. and let it fall back to bottom.Some days even when useing braided line you do not feel the bite,just extra wt. felt on the lure.On mono line they can suck and spit it out and you'll never know it until you see you tube half off your hook.You'll see me preach "scent" though out my posting and its more important this of year then any other.I start my search by rigging up 4 rods with different jig wts.,1/32,1/16,1/8 and a pink crank bait.A finder would be nice but they aren't really needed in the smaller lakes and owbows,unless your clueless as what to look for.I like to start by fishing the points before trying inside blends or brush tops.B/c this time of year they're(maybe) on the move and will school off any type wood,open water crappie as I call them.They are by far to me the easiest crappie to catch,by useing scent you can sometimes set the school off into a feeding fiz.
Crappie aren't really hard to find,whats hard is finding the right colored jig head,wt.,color of lure,size of lure,speed of lure,which scent and a wooden nickel.If you can find all that it doesn't matter what type day,how cold/hot,swallow/deep you can catch enough to mess the dishes up.