CrappieCrazed (Robin) had a couple questions, anyone else is more than welcome to jump in!

Crappie do not always feed up...they will also root out worms, crawdads, whatever else off the bottom, if a golden opportunity to feed presents itself, they will not pass up a free, easy, meal...fish are OPPORTUNISTIC!
Besides not all Crappie just rest in tree-tops, some are constantly on the move looking for their favorite schools of baitfish...some have routes from feeding grounds back to their home base of cover, and some are in lake with no cover and just rocks.
Crappie also lay right on drop-offs...so if you are fishing drops, you can cast past the drop-off and bottom bounce your lure back to you and it will follow the drop down to where the Slabs are. If the Crappie are just packed up on the bottom under a school of Shad or just resting, you can bottom bounce it right to them.
Not all fish are in cover, especially in Ohio...our lakes are WAAAAY different than in the South.
To fish a lure Ohio, you should know and be able to control your lure in any part of the water column. You do that with weight, drop, and pace....you can vary that by twitches, stops and starts, etc.

River Crappie are just like Crappie anywhere else, they have basic patterns just like any other....right now with water in the 30's, they are in backwater areas where the temps may be 39 degrees, or in deeper drop-offs at a main channel....they are looking for a couple extra degrees of warmth and any kind of micro-organism to sustain them....most of the time they will suspend to reduce the need to feed...but they will eat if they do not have to expend vital energy. Studies have been done that show Crappies start to lose their ability to swim properly when the water starts into the lower 30's...same with Blugills, Bass, etc. Cats, Gators, and Perch, seem to be immune to the cold and feed and swim normally...testing was only done to 29 degrees and all of those fish were fine...Crappies died well before that. Any highly oxygenated warmer area is an even better benefit, so if the quiet drop-off is close to an old creekbed with flow, or the river has a backwater slue, then that offers almost everything. But one thing for sure, they won't be in a heavy flow that is cold, they just can't take in enough calories to fight off the cold and a current.

Crappie chasing lures.....I started Crappie fishing again, almost by accident....everytime I was out at CJ Bass fishing, a Crappie would Smash my lures...Hey Hey, "lightbulbs" started going off again in my head....so why did I have to fish for Crappie and be bored with a bobber or vertical jig, etc....I didn't.
A BIG Crappie eats SMALLER fish....most SMALLER fish swim away from a BIG Crappie, and the BIG Crappie trys to go get it, catch it, so it gets to eat a BIG, HIGH PROTEIN, FILLING, MEAL....simple! You don't have to fish slow all of the time, or bobber fish, or jig, or spider rig or troll...you can cast to a Crappie just like anything else MOST OF THE YEAR!

more later!