Jeremy Smith and James Lindner show you how to locate and catch deepwater crappies roaming the basins.

Deepwater Crappies

Isolating and catching deepwater crappies in the basin isn’t terribly difficult – they stick out like a sore thumb on your electronics and where you find one, there’s usually more.

The key is finding them and then staying on them. Once you have found the fish we like to generally punch out the area in order to stay ahead of the moving school. Another very helpful tool for locating and finding these fish is Humminbird’s MEGA Live. This forward facing sonar allows you to track down the moving school and will help you stay on top of the fish all day.

When targeting these deepwater crappies you’ll want to fish some heavy that can get down to the fish fast. Baits like a Rapala Jigging Rap in a size three or a VMC Tungsten probe jig or a VMC wax tail jig.

All three of these baits sink really fast and allow you to stay on top of these roaming schools of crappies.

You just have to see how active the fish are and what kind of style of bait they are willing to bite that day.

Now if you’re chasing panfish in 25+ feet of water, barotrauma and delayed mortality become serious considerations. It’s safe to expect that fish caught within this depth range is doomed for death, no matter how slowly you reel them up. That is were angler ethics comes into play. Once you caught what you are going to eat lay off the school to help protect the resource.