crappie jump ????

Can anyone say for certain they have ever seen crappie chasing shad to the surface and breaking the water like white bass?
My son and I were fishing Nolin early Sunday morning, white and black bass were jumping all over. Was on a point and catching a few crappie
casting and once and a while would be looking in just the right spot at the right time and would see what looked like a crappie busting shad
on the surface. My son thought he seen the same thing.
Been fishing a long time and have never "thought" that I seen this before.
Are my old eyes deceiving me or has anyone else experienced this as well ?

I've seen crappie quite a few times on the surface. I have to say the activity is not as frenzied as white bass when they "boil" the surface. This past Saturday we had a good bite on a local lake, surface temp was 88 and as long as we had some surface activity we had a good crappie bite. Most of these fish were suspended over 20 fow.

Colayn ... I've never had a confirmed sighting of such activity from Crappie. But, even though they're not slash/dash predators, it wouldn't surprise me to see them intercepting fleeing Shad ... even on the surface. I have seen small White Bass & Hybrids do this, and their coloration can easily be confused as 'looking like' a Crappie ... but, they usually "smack" the water. I wouldn't expect Crappie to make much of a surface splash, maybe only porpoising at the surface & creating a small disturbance.

I did, however, once see what, for the life of me, looked like Bluegill's making little dimples on the surface. There were hundreds of flying ants that had swarmed & ended up on the water. I can't remember how we caught them ... but, we did catch several White Bass in the area, and when we cleaned them .. we found their stomachs to be full of these ants Doh It wasn't Bluegills, after all ... but, White Bass that were so delicately plucking these ants from the surface Rofl Since then, I'm skeptical of "calling" (identifying) a fish by it's splash ... unless I can actually SEE the fish, up close & just under the surface. I don't even ID the whole school as one particular species, either ... since I've seen several species involved in "jumps", at the same time. So, yeah ... it "could" have been Crappie picking off the wounded or stragglers of the school of Shad.

... cp :cool:

CP, good point about "picking off the wounded" because there were a lot of small wounded shad swimming around on the surface.
Just curious what others have seen. I , for whatever reason never thought crappie would splash and break the surface, but when my son thought the same thing
I got to thinking about it.

Slabmaster, I have been to Taylorsville Lake twice in the last 3 weeks and I have caught a lot of crappie using a somewhat jump pattern. July the 5th I got on the lake before sunrise and there were scattered bass jumps all over the lake, as I traveled up river I stoped and caught and released 8 or 9 11 to13 inch stripes. I started fishing for crappie in standing trees in 15 to 24 ft of water, wasn,t having much luck untill a school of striper started jumping right by the boat.I tossed my jig out and caught a 11 inch black crappie,about 2 ft deep, I caught 4 more keepers and several small ones from that spot. I fished the rest of the morning and kept a limit of crappie from 10 to 14 inches long. I believe the crappie are keying into the surface feeding,and I noticed that the trees that had some small minnows swimming around the trees were the only places that held crappies. The majority of the fish were caught as the jig fell slow from 5 to 12 ft of water. I fished the same pattern July the 14 and caught a limit, only there wasn,t any surface action that morning but there had to be minnows around the trees that held crappie. I believe the crappie key in on the feeding of the stripes and are watching for crippled minnows. Dave

I've seem crappie chase minnows out of the water. A quick cast to the spot resulted in fish after fish and this was only in about a foot & a half of water. I do agree that most of the feeding this thread mentioned was mopping up the crippled fish. Easy pickins!