What's going on with the Crappie not biting in the Fall?

This is the third year in a row that the crappie have been under the docks but not biting. I'm from Michigan and I make the 12 hour trip down to fish the Neely Henry and Weiss Lake but the crappie bite has been very poor. Tried coming down the 3rd week of October, last week of October and this year the 1st week of November and the crappie fishing has just been terrible for everyone. The fish that were biting were nice but less than 10 fish for 8 hours of fishing over 60 docks many of which on earlier trips would have yielded 10 fish on one dock, something is going on. Even the guides were saying they would just be taking the customers money because the fish just were not biting on Weiss. Any ideas on what's going on?

You may need to try different methods of fishing for them instead of just fishing docks. The guides that I know are catching plenty of fish. My wife and I fished Neely Henry last Thursday and had a good day but we do not fish docks. We use our electronics and find and fish offshore cover.

Thanks RodgerA. That's some good advice. I'll switch it up next time.

Dock fishing has been dead for me this fall.

Attachment 511635I forgot to attach pic of wife with her big fish. She almost always catches the biggest one.

Just from my perspective. Every new crappie fisherman tends to head for the easy locations just to bag fish.
While docks are a ton of fun, most of the fish under them are well educated these days, especially since forward facing sonar. You can give the most inexperienced crappie fisherman FFS and a dock and they are likely to catch fish. Then there is the learning curve of shooting docks.
So if the fish are there you’ve got to master different presentations and use different profiles.
These fish aren’t dumb either, they can tell FFS is hitting them. So you’ve got to figure ways around that. I’ve fished some heavily fished docks with FFS and the fish will bunch up or even sink to the bottom telling me something has spooked them when the FFS has been left on them for only a few minutes.

But one thing for certain. They travel to and from those docks, very few are full time residents. Find their paths and the structure they are moving back and forth from.


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Originally Posted by RogerA

Attachment 511635I forgot to attach pic of wife with her big fish. She almost always catches the biggest one.

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Thats a healthy Slab!

My fall and winter fishing usually centers on feeder creeks and laydowns. There always seems to be Crappie in these areas in the fall and it only gets better as the water temperature drops.

:twocents