Can anyone provide me some tips this year on the spawn. Or any early predictions on when the spawn will happen. Seems like every year I'm always to late. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Can anyone provide me some tips this year on the spawn. Or any early predictions on when the spawn will happen. Seems like every year I'm always to late. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I'll just have to be honest with you and say it isn't possible to predict that in LA with our weather, but pin pointing it isn't a repetitive thing no matter what. Their behaviors change year to year. Best thing to do is to start going late February and venture off in areas you plan to fish to monitor the water temps and drop a line for 10 mins or so. Scouting beats a fishing report 10/10 times. I will say this, better to be way early. When you wake up and it's cold, but warm in the evenings. Fish the channel edges 10ft deep in the am, and your shallower flats once the water temp has warmed later in the evening. I've moved and caught em shallower the instance my graph starting reading temps in the 60s quite a bit.
Can't be done with moon phases, etc., or even water temp. to an extent since it changes so much----I'm always late or early seems like. Varies lake to lake big time due to water clarity, depth, etc.... We were catching fish in 30 ft. of water last spring in one lake, and 25 miles away to the NORTH they were tearing 'em up in 2ft of water! The only accurate way to predict the start of the spawn is if your boss has you come in on Saturday, or you are sick on the weekend. Those days are guaranteed to be the best days of the spawn.
The best bet is to find out who the neighborhood crappie guru is and install a gps transmitter near the sonar transducer and see where he's fishing while you're on your lunch break at work.
JBJ
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Originally Posted by bayoumonster
Thanks everyone for there info. I think in the next couple weeks I am going to go out and start scouting ideal crappie spawn locations. Everyone makes it seem so easy when it comes to crappie during spawning season. I guess I'm just always in the wrong location or picked a bad day to go.
Everything that they've said is true. Seat time is the only thing. We haven't had a bad winter the past few years so it's been early, IMO, the past couple years. I remember year before last I caught fish 18" deep on the bank on February 8th. Who woulda thunk it?? If I hadn't gone fishing I never would have known. I was the only one on the water that day and me and my daughters ripped em!!!!!
Not North, but I went back and checked the dates on my pictures from the last three seasons. I am a shallow water fisherman. Earliest good catch was last weekend in February. Latest first catch was 2 weekend in March. All from Saline and Spring Bayou.
I would say that the spawn is a lot earlier than most of us think. It was 22 degrees last week and I'm not sure what the water temp was, but the fish we caught were about to spawn judging from the eggs in the females. In years past it seemed like the spawn came with the nice warm days of spring but in recent years I have started catching them earlier and earlier and that is because I am now fishing earlier for them. I read somewhere that the larger females spawn earlier than the smaller fish. I don't know if that's true but we sure caught some nice ones this Friday and Saturday.
"gene"
That's very interesting "gene" maybe there could be some truth to that. I think a lot of us get caught up into the whole "spring time perect sunny day weather" and all of the big slabs are spawning right under our nose in mid February if not earlier.
Crappiekingjigs, what do you consider your home waters? The larger the lake the longer the window to catch fish shallow will be....