While most people have quit fishing for crappie by late May because the slabs have finished their spawn season (for the most part), Maynard Edwards, a guide at the Yadkin River chain of lakes, said they’re making a mistake.
“Crappie fishing can be just phenomenal this time of year,” he said. “To quit fishing for crappies right now is a big mistake.”
Edwards, who operates Yadkin Lakes Guide Service (336-249-6782, 336-247-1287, www.extremefishingconcepts.com) and spends most of his time at High Rock Lake, said the 2009 spring spawn was kind of unusual because fish never really made it to the banks at The Rock in big numbers.
“The bank bite never materialized,” he said. “We had a good spawn, but it was deeper than normal. The wholesale shallow-water-on-woody-structure spawn didn’t happen at a lot of lakes, I’ve heard. Maybe it was because we had such a cool spring with a lot of rain and water temperature never really got up high enough to pull fish out of deeper water.”
Edwards, who uses a crappie-fishing technique he calls “strolling” (extremely slow drifts across deep ledges, edges of creek and river channels and mid-lake humps, using a trolling motor, with minnows and jigs set at different depths), said he’s been catching crappie from 18- to 22-feet deep.
“We catch 70, 80, sometimes 90 fish per trip,” he said.
High Rock has an 8-inch minimum size for crappie, but Edwards tells his clients “if it’s not 10 inches, let’s throw him back.”
“We haven’t been catching any record-breakers,” he said, “but we always get several that go from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds.”
And that’s nothing to sneeze at when fishing for black crappie and just the right ingredients for a tasty meal of fried fillets with cole slaw, hush puppies and sweet iced tea.
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