How to know it
Two fish go by the name. The black crappie, the common one in the north, is silver-green and speckled with black over the whole body, and has seven or eight spines in its dorsal fin. The white crappie, more common in the southern parts of the region and in rivers and reservoirs, is paler with its dark marks arranged in vertical bars, and has five or six dorsal spines. Both are deep-bodied, flat-sided fish with a large mouth for a panfish and a thin, tearing membrane around the jaw — the papermouth — that makes a hard hookset a mistake.
Where it lives
Crappie live in lakes, flowages, reservoirs and the slow backwaters of rivers across the region. They want cover and are rarely far from it: flooded brush and timber, cribs, bulrushes, docks, deep weed edges. Unlike bluegill they often hold off the bottom, suspended at a particular depth over deep water in summer and winter, which is why finding them is the whole game.
Through the year
In spring, as the water warms into the fifties and sixties, crappie move into shallow bays and along brushy shorelines to spawn, and for a few weeks they are shallow and easy. After the spawn they slide out to the first deep weed edge or to brush in deeper water, and from early summer on they suspend — hanging over the basin, often in open water, moving with the plankton and the small minnows they feed on. Fall gathers them in large schools on deep edges, and under the ice they hold in the same basins, often biting best at dusk.
How guides fish for it
Small and light. A small jig — a marabou or plastic body on a light head — under a slip bobber or cast and swum slowly, or a crappie minnow on a light hook under a float. In summer a guide finds suspended schools with the electronics and either vertical-jigs over them or trolls small jigs at a set depth, a method called spider rigging in the south and simply trolling in the north. Through the ice it is small jigs and spoons tipped with a minnow head or a waxworm, worked at the depth the fish show on the flasher. A crappie guide's skill is in finding the school on the day and keeping the boat over it.
Handling and release
Crappie are easy to hold and have no teeth. The membrane around the mouth tears, so a fish is lifted by the body, not swung on the line. Many are kept, and a crappie fry is a reason people fish for them.
Rules
Bag limits vary by state and sometimes by water, and some lakes have length limits to protect the big fish. The Minnesota DNR and the Wisconsin DNR publish the current rules, and a guide will know the ones for the water you are on.
