Page 8 - Crappie NOW | August 2016

Tip of the Month: Where to Find Shallow Crappie in August

Where to Find Shallow Crappie in August

By John Phillips
Jim and Barbara
Reedy, a husband-and-
wife team from Charles-
ton, Missouri, have tour-
nament crappie fished for
two decades. These two
crappie fishermen also
travel to about 20 tourna-
ments each year all over
the nation from Florida
to Minnesota. “We like to
travel the country, meet
new people and learn a
lot of new crappie tech-
niques,” Jim Reedy ex-
plains.
At this time of the
year, the water across U.
S. lakes is from warm to
hot, and most fishermen
think the crappie will be
deep. We have found that
the opposite is true. We’ll
often locate our crappie
in 5 to 10 feet of water, or
less. We’re looking for big
balls of schooling shad.
Any place we can find the
shad surfacing or running
the banks, we’ll gener-
ally pinpoint some crap-
pie fairly close to those
schools of shad. We may
be fishing over 18 feet of
water, but perhaps we’ll be catching crappie at 7- or 8-foot deep. Sometimes we’ll
find the shad close to shore, and we may catch crappie in 5 to 6 feet of water. We’ll
slow-troll with 12-foot rods. We prefer the Capps & Coleman Double Minnow Rigs
and usually fish with live minnows, although from time to time we will fish with jigs
tipped with minnows. Our favorite color jig is blue and chartreuse.
To learn more tips and tactics for catching crappie in the spring and summer check
out Crappie: How to Catch Them Spring and Summer - http://amzn.to/WGaJLT
available in either eBook or print book formats.

8 Crappie NOW August 2016