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I was wondering if anyone could give me information about the crappie bite in the Alexandria-Miltona area. I have not caught alot of crappies this year, and need some help finding them and finding the best presentation. I would really appreciate any information that can help me get on them.
Check out your local bait shops. They should be starting to see crappie minnow sales going up about now, and may be able to point you in the right directions, at least generally. Be sure to ask about public fishing docks, if you do not have a boat. The type the DNR puts out can be really dynamite as we get deeper into the fall. The smaller ones are starting to show up in good numbers at the DNR docks in quite a few places around the Twin Cities. The Alex area should even be a bit ahead of us.
Thank you for the information! I will be sure to check with the bait shops. Also, what should I look for in a dock/fishing peir for fishing crappie?
Look for the MN DNR fishing docks. Wide and stable they cast a complete dock shadow since they float on a solid base of closed cell styrofoam. You can't shoot these docks, btw, since there is no space underneath to shoot into.
The best are the longest that reach out well past the outside weedline and are set on gradually stepped breaks out from that point. That forms an excellent structural pathway up over feeding tables and the smaller, often tiny breaks between those tables that crappies seem to like best in this country. I always fish the leg rather than the cross T and almost never off the end, not for crappies, unless the dock is short enough to just pass the weedline. Look for the breaksteps along the dock shadow.
There will be both overhead and bottom structure to orient both forage and feeding movements as well as a very definite signal along the breaklines for the fish to move in and out along, and not usually just crappies.
I do not especially like docks that are not solid. They provide too little dock shadow for my presentations. I find crappies very often lay at the edge of the a strong dock shadow and often orient into what lake current moves across under the docks. That also moves tiny offerings deeper into the dock shadow into the face of waiting crappies, which produces my best crappie numbers. (That also means that often one side of the dock will produce and the other will not.)
They can also be very fussy about both size and color in such situations, although not always. One clue I use is that if the local sunnies take an occasional peck then the color may be close to right for the crappies. If the sunnies go wild, then it is probably not.
One other thing the smaller offering you put out the slower you must present it and the softer the bite will be generally and the finer diameter line you will have to use to get those offerings down. This really is line watcher fishing and noodle tips that show the smallest extra drag are also a real help. One is simply not going to feel much of the catchable bite, often not even most of it.
Since you will be working various depths all the way to the bottom in perhaps 20' of water, this isn't bobber fishing either. It is one pole vertical jigging, and when you finally work out the pattern you won't have time or attention enough for any extra pole anyway. Pay attention to the sinking line, too, very often that will show the first crappie bite you get when it just stops going down before it should. That also points to the level in the water column where they are holding.
One more thing, there are quite a few docks that fit this formula, don't get married to a single one. A lot of these docks show that some valid forethought went into their placement. The relatively minimal kit required by this approach allows one to move between docks very easily. Set up a route and move between them, until you hit the fish. If you cannot find them one place, they will be some place else; so do not overstay any spot that is not producing.