The crappies are ready to go in the Hayward area!
First, a water level update: our lakes remain low but have been recharged somewhat from the winter snows. I’m guessing that we’re still 6-10″ low, and the dry spring isn’t helping that.
Now for the slabs:
I spent parts of 2 days chasing crappies on my favorite early season panfish lake. We found water temps of 51-54 degrees in the bays we worked. On Saturday the crappie bite was slow until dusk, then somebody flipped a switch and we were really busy for about an hour. Sunday was an all-day affair.
On both days, we could see tons of crappies sitting in deep water (8-12′) on the locator and the camera, but these guys were in a negative mood. On Saturday, we finally started to connect with these guys at a transition from their deep water haunt onto a shallow, weedy feeding flat. We anchored up on this transition and let the slab come to us. On Sunday, we found biters scattered all over the flat, so drifting with the wind until we contacted a pod of biters was the plan.
We didn’t find any monsters, but instead decent numbers of 10-11″ fish with large numers of 8-10 inchers.
The bite is not hot and heavy by any means, but that will change in a positive way with the predicted warm temps. Get out an enjoy some fine pre-season panfish action!
