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Today I caught about 40 6" crappie. I changed depth, colors , presentation and different styles of plastics and still catching the same 6" crappie. Do larger crappie school with smaller ones or is it time to move on if you are catching smaller the ones?
I’d move on if you’re wanting bigger. :twocents
I usually move if I am only catching small fish.:twocents
From my experience, rarely do crappie of drastically different sizes school together. Usually they are either babys 4-8" schooled to avoid predators, smalls 8-10" schooled chasing small bait, or bigger fish schooled in small groups of a handful (or just singles even) out looking for big bait.Quote:
Originally Posted by Moose07
Obviously exceptions to this.
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:popcorn
Yes , as a general rule , certain types of cover will sometimes attract and hold different sizes. For example, I have creek channel I fish with a leaning log in 25 ft of water. I check it every year the past 12 years and it always has 6 in fish and nothing bigger ( that will bite anyway)
When I get on a new spot with dinks I try to get under them and if I don’t get a keeper I usually move on.
The exception would be an extremely big tree top , like 30 ft across, sometimes bigs are on one side or in the middle and dinks are on the other.
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The first thing I do is fish higher up above the school of small fish and tease the larger fish to rise. If any are there I can usually get them to bite but as posted above a lot of times you just need to keep moving till you find a spot recruiting larger fish. One thing to keep in mind is larger fish are not on the food chain like 6in fish still are and I find them above the smaller stuff over the cover instead of in it.
perplexing question no doubt , there are several factors in the mix , as mentioned certain cover will hold smaller fish , the denser the cover the more small fish like it, to avoid predation and have a better ambush point as well to feed .
that said sometimes larger fish will be present deeper in that cover and or on the edges , likely set up to ambush the congregation of little fish in said brush .
Crappie will feed on crappie for sure , there is no honor amongst crappie about passing up ANY meal .
All said me thinks this about that , there are always a few nice fish in these cases from what we see , but it may be 50 or more to one and that gets tedious for sure. Another thing that may come into play is to upsize to a larger bait to reduce the little fisheez want to hit it before the larger fish have a chance .
would I personally move , probably not until I ketch EVERY single fish in the area JUST to make sure you know .....
Bertha the whale crappie might be dwelling amongst the pigmy crappie fish ......it could happen you know .....:Rofl
sides all that ketchn is ketchn , sooner or later if you ketch large numbers of fish , a big dumb one will get in the mix ....just saying :crazy:
in synopsis if you are after eater fish and looking at the average fish in the pack size and want to fill the cooler it might be best to find a school of eaters instead of sitting on the small fish .....