Quote Originally Posted by naturenut View Post
thx for the reply.
people say that a female will go up to a shallow bedding area, and return back out to deeper water, time after
time, until she spawns. i was curious, how far they will travel during this period.
if the distance is to far, will they just stay in the bedding area ?
i have a spot like this, and like to try and catch them out in the deeper area. but not sure if they would even travel
back & forth this distance... about 200 yards.
I'm no expert on this, but I doubt a female would travel 200yds, back & forth. They'd more than likely be at the first depth change (drop off) or around a submerged tree just out from the spawning bank.

If you find them 200yds from a spawning bank, it's likely they're on their way TO the spawning/staging area.

If it were me ... I'd start looking for the females out along a quick depth drop of at least 2 - 3ft deeper than the water over the beds. Any creek channel or ditch or washout will have a edge where the bottom drops lower than the surrounding area. These can be the "highways" that the Crappie use to get to these spawning grounds. And Crappie aren't always spawning "up against the bank" ... all they require is the right depth and bottom composition, water clarity, wood or weeds or sometimes even rocks, protection from heavy current & wind, and the proper water temp. Sometimes those conditions are yards away from the shoreline, but the fish don't care. And if I don't find them at the first bottom depth drop, I'd keep going out deeper & deeper (along any channel present) until I did find them or I reached the mouth of the creek or bay. At that point, I'd look for them on either point of the mouth, just around the outside of either of those points, or smack dab in the middle of the mouth of that creek/bay.

... cp