Madison Crappies!!

[Fish'n guy]

I have been fishing Madison for the past week and have finally found a pattern on the big crappies!!!! After catching a few nice crappies up shallower late last week and then having a big lull in size and numbers there I decided to go out and fish a little deeper. I wasn't expecting it to be a hot bite however, because I was targeting them in their daytime staging areas. My main goal was to follow them in shallow when the sun began to go down and be on the school when they began their nightly feeding binge.

I began fishing in 28'-35' of water and located a nice school of crappies right away in 30' of water, but as I expected they were hardly interested in anything I presented them with and only got one little 5" whitie.

I then opted to go find another school of crappies and did so in 33'-35' of water. These crappies were somewhat more active and better sized running a fat and healthy 10.5"-12.5". The more active fish were coming through at 18'-25'. The peak times seemed to be 3:30pm-6:30pm. The fish bit on a #12 pink/white Marmooska jig/waxworm combo during the daylight hours, and as it got dark they seemed to go for a size 10 white glow ratso/waxworm.

The funny thing was that as it got dark the crappies never seemed to move shallow or at all for that matter. Out of the 25 holes we had punched only two of them produced fish. There was fish on the screen constantly, and at times there was about ten feet of solid red on the flasher. COOL !!!!

The weather was great and the fish cooperated so it was a good outing once again!!!

I will be out there again on Thursday (weather permitting), but I don't think that I will drive out with the rain and warmth that we are supposed to get this week. Althought the ice is still running a good 16"-18" thick.

GOOD FISHIN!!!!!!!!

[Team Otter]

Nice report. Maybe us "shallow guys" pushed all the fish out deep...

[TeamWalleye]

great report! I think the cool thing about that is they stayed put in one spot.

[Fish'n guy]

Oh of course!!! Those shallow fish new they were in deep trouble !!!

[Fish'n guy]

Teamwalleye,

That was kind of neat how they stayed in one place and never moved, especially in that deeper water. I am not exactly sure why they held right on that spot, but I did notice that new fish were coming on the screen while others left. So they were milling around, but not very far. I was half tempted to put my Aqua-View down and investigate and see what they might be feeding on, but I decided not to at the risk of spooking the school.

One thing is for sure...these fish dont miss too many meals..

[mrwalleyee]

I've run into situations like you talk about. Expecially out on Madison. One trick that I have learned over the years is to not throw away my left over skikes and waxies. If I run into a school like that and they are a little tight lipped, I "accidentally" spill a half dozen spikes at a time down my hole . It has a tendency to get them in a feeding mode pretty quick.