It’s a fair assessment to say no two bridges are alike, but one thing that all have in common, at least the ones with sufficient water underneath them, is that, at some point during the year, they are fish magnets.
For crappie, bridges are frequently great choices nearly every month. These man-made structures offer shade, depth, food and even spawning sites.
Tom Mundy of Laurens, S.C., has had a love affair with bridges for as far back as he can remember. In fact, it was fishing under a bridge one afternoon that gave him the inspiration for a lure that has become the best-selling of his collection of Fish Stalker Lures baits. That same bait has helped propel his company from a garage business to a major manufacturer.
Mundy said one of the best things about fishing bridges for crappie is that they are easy to locate and even easier to fish. He said anglers who have never been on a particular lake before can find and catch crappie simply by understanding how the fish relate to bridge structure and how to properly fish them.
“In the summer, I’m going to concentrate all of my efforts on the portion of a bridge that spans water from 14 feet on out to 20 to 25 feet,” Mundy said. “Crappie are usually going to suspend somewhere off the bottom, but by concentrating on that depth range, you can eliminate a lot of area.”
The second aspect of Mundy’s summer bridge pattern is looking at how the sun hits the structure. Crappie are almost always going to relate to the darkest, shadiest areas they can find, he said, and those can be areas not directly underneath the structure if you are fishing first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon.
“Always follow the shade,” he said. “At 5 o’clock, those fish will move out from under a bridge and suspend in the shaded water as the sun moves. Everyone else is headed home when the best fishing starts.”
While he is graphing bottom depths, Mundy is also going to watch his sonar unit to see how fish are relating to the structure. There are plenty of units that will allow an angler to view the area to the side or in front of the boat, but he also believes crappie become so accustomed to boat traffic during the summer that driving right over the top of them rarely spooks them.
“Depending on what I see on the sonar, I’m either going to get right on top of the fish and drop straight down to them, or I’m going to cast out in front of the boat and let the bait sink down to the fish,” he said. “Either way, just get the bait to the fish and let it do its job.”
As summer wears on, Mundy said crappie tend to suspend deeper in the water column, but they may be higher in the water column early or late in the day and often very shallow at night.
Another feature he’s looking for, especially if it’s a bridge he’s never fished before, is the presence of any horizontal structure under the water.
“I love old bridges that have wood supports, like some of the older railroad bridges with cross ties between the supports,” he said. “The next best thing is a concrete bridge built with an “H” pattern where the crossover of the “H” is under water. Either way, crappie are going to suspend under that horizontal structure.”
Mundy said he fishes artificial baits 90% of the time. He will tip jigs with minnows if he’s long-line trolling, but for fishing bridges, he fishes artificials 100% of the time. and he fishes much-lighter jigheads than most anglers.
“I use three jig weights,” he said. “A 1/24-ounce head is the heaviest I use; that’s for when crappie are deep, then a 1/32-ounce jig, which is my all-around favorite for most conditions. I use the 1/64-ounce when crappie are suspended above structure or really finicky.”
Regardless of the jig’s weight or fish orientation, Mundy uses 4-pound line for the majority of his presentations. His choice is a fluorocarbon made by Sunline called Super Sniper. The Japanese-made line is offered in 2-, 3-, 4-, 5- and 6-pound test; Mundy said when crappie get finicky in the heat of summer, he will drop down to 3- or even 2-pound line.
“It has no stretch, no memory, and it’s nearly invisible in the water,” he said. “I fish it on my signature Slabtail jig rod. It’s a 4-foot-10 ultralight spinning rod made by B’n’M poles.”
The light line and the light jig are two pieces of a natural presentation that Mundy describes as “irresistible.” The third piece is the bait itself. The Fish Stalker Slabtail jig is designed to ride horizontally in the water, even on the fall. The flat-sided tail offers a subtle, quivering action that makes the bait hard to resist.
At the beginning of the summer, Mundy prefers the larger, 1¾- and 2-inch versions, but he will drop down to the original Slabtail, a 1¼-inch bait, when water temperatures soar above the 80-degree mark.
“You put it down there on his nose, even if they’re not actively feeding, and most times, he won’t pass it up,” said Mundy.
Crappie and current
One aspect of fishing for crappie around bridges that many anglers don’t pay attention to is water current. Moving water may be caused by wind, natural flow or, in the case of hydro-electric impoundments, the release of water through the dam. Tom Mundy, owner of Fish Stalker Lures, said current can be good or bad for crappie fishing.
“Crappie usually feed pretty good in mild current, but heavy current will shut them down,” he said.
Mundy’s best advice is to watch and see where the current breaks on a bridge and work those areas to your advantage. Crappie may hold in front of a large pillar, which creates an upstream eddy, or they may hold behind the pillar in the downstream eddy. Mundy will fish the eddy on the shady side of the bridge every time.
“With the small baits I make and use, the trick is to present them where it will reach the crappie in a natural manner,” he said. “Too much weight, or a tiny bait swimming against the current, doesn’t look natural and won’t get many bites.”
Mundy likes to cast upcurrent and let the current wash the bait back down to the fish in a natural manner. In some cases, he may position his boat upcurrent and drop the bait so the current will push it to the structure where crappie are holding.
His final thought on fishing current around bridges is to remember that where there is current, there is often structure in the form of woody debris or logjams that stack up on the upstream side. Not only will this structure attract fish, but it will create current breaks different that what you might expect to find on what appears to be uniform bridge pilings.
“Sometimes, that structure will change almost daily, because stuff will wash in, and it doesn’t take a lot of current to collect several sticks or logs,” said Mundy. “The other thing is, anglers love to sink brush tops around bridge pilings to come back and fish at night, so don’t think you know a bridge just because you’ve fished it in the past. Take time and look it over each time you visit or you may miss fish you didn’t know about.”
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