Crappie don’t die in the winter months. Often you’ll catch the biggest crappie of the year during cold weather for several reasons. Winter crappie tend to school on certain structure and bottom breaks and hold in that same location for several weeks. For this reason, if you find where a school of crappie is holding, you often can go back to that same location for several consecutive weeks, and continue to catch good numbers of big crappie. Since wintertime crappie are often slow to bite, patience will produce more crappie than constantly moving from location to location. So, if you find crappie on your depth finder, and you give them an opportunity to bite for 30 to 45 minutes and don’t start catching them, then you may want to change vocations. Oftentimes different schools of crappie bite at different times of the day.
Remember that crappie aren’t bears. They don’t hibernate, and they do have to feed all year long. This book contains tips and tactics from crappie specialists. With the information you find here, we hope to put big slab crappie in your livewell during the winter and plenty of white, tasty fillets on your plate.