How to Use Baits for Crappie Fishing in the Fall

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How to Use Baits for Crappie Fishing in the Fall

Want to go bait fishing for crappie in the fall? This can sometimes be a confusing thing for many crappie anglers. As the water's temperature starts to lower down, the crappie's usual feeding and living patterns will be really hard to predict.

The patterns you were predicting and using in the late summer months may not be effective in the fall. The bait fish have stopped spawning so there's more competition for the bait fish that are left in the water.

But you can use this little fact to your advantage to catch more crappie in the fall. You just need to study some facts.

It's a fact that the bait fish will be larger and you might think that you would need to increase the size of your crappie jig in this fishing scenario to match the size of the crappie's food source and in most of the occasions you're correct.

But what you need to keep in mind in the late fall as the water's temperature continues to drop, the metabolism of the crappie will also drop. And the crappie will not be able to chase your crappie jigs unless you're going to use a very slow fishing presentation.

Now this is something that goes against your reasoning and what you would normally do when the food source for crappie is bigger in size. If you want to know how to catch black crappie, you can utilize smaller jig sizes or use some technique to slow down your larger crappie jigs.

The reason many crappie fishermen use a smaller bait fishing presentation such as small jigs is because they float downward through the water at a much slower pace. This is just right for the slow crappie in the late fall and winter.

Like I've mentioned before, you can still use larger crappie jigs but they need to be presented very slowly. If you want to catch crappie with a bigger crappie jig then you need to use a heavier line because this will make it sink much slower in the water.