Identifying bigger crappie FFS

I fish a lake that is completely over run with 6 - 8 inch crappies. We're lucky to catch 8 fish over 9 inches in an outing. I know there are lots of bigger crappies in the lake as we occasionally catch fish in the 12 - 14 inch range.

My question for you forward facing sonar users:

How do you distinguish larger crappie from smaller? A lot of times I find a mark that looks larger and it turns out to be a 4 incher. I'm wondering what sort of tips/settings anyone uses to "weed out" the smaller fish.

Thanks in advance!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

if your jig is the size of the dots that is a start , drop the jig and compare the size on the screen ...
if they appear larger than the jig , ketch a few to get a better idea , more often than not , crappie on LS that are decent size look ALOT bigger than your jig when you drop it ,just saying :cheers2
on a side note , big crappie often stay SO tight to stuff and are not easily spotted ....fyi

Also, if you keep your settings the same from spot to spot then you will start learning the size shown on screen. When you change depth, distance, etc.. it changes the pixel size of fish and then that messes you up.

Ahh, front facing sonar? Took me a minute to decipher that, and I’m NOT gonna say the first thing that came to mind [emoji38]


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I keep grids on mine. In a tournament I'm looking for a fish that roughly fills a 2ft X 2ft grid. Of course that's distorted but in my areas on my unit, that's generally a 15"+ fish.

Think outside the box. Im a live scope guy too and have noticed livescope is changing the fish and noticed bigger fish are tight tight on cover structure or they’re drifting away from cover structure as boat approaches. Thjnk hard about what other places a fish would migrate thru and you’ll see bigger fish on screen. It’s insane how much easier bigger fish are to catch in totally off the wall places nobody else has thought to target. Just my 2cents

All great tips thanks everybody!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

I like running the grid lines on my 1222. also I like a bright return. When they get dim and start flickering that means they are swimming. Depending on which way the fish is pointing he may not return as much signal but the height of the return might indicate that it's a larger crappie.

I do not have enough experience on my livescope to figure out the size of fish I am looking at. I do have guide friends who can pick them out most of the time. I need more time on the water to figure it out.

I tried running the grid but never could find fish that were positioned right I guess to fill up the square !
but one thing I know these were decent size fish !
Attachment 466058
most of these fish were 11-14”

if someone could rotate the pic you could see it better!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ketchn

if your jig is the size of the dots that is a start , drop the jig and compare the size on the screen ...
if they appear larger than the jig , ketch a few to get a better idea , more often than not , crappie on LS that are decent size look ALOT bigger than your jig when you drop it ,just saying :cheers2
on a side note , big crappie often stay SO tight to stuff and are not easily spotted ....fyi

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Size compared to jig has not always held true for me. It depends on what direction the fish is facing on how big it will look on the screen. Even a 7 inch fish will look bigger than a 1/16 oz jig when the fish is sideways.

I've caught big crappie that looked the same size as my jig and small crappie that looked way bigger?

I have found the tiny fish seems to hang in large groups/schools and bigger fish like to be more to them selves. Even with that sad I catch nice gish in schools of small fish but only 1 to about every 5 dinks, sometimes less.

So in summary - Who Knows! :scratchhead:scratchhead:scratchhead