crappie question

don't know if this has been addressed before,..if so I'm sorry.
For years when I lived near a lake,..about this time of year, after the tourists went home and the lake was quiet, I would go out onto the lake and there would be groups of crappies so near the surface that you would see a bunch of fins on the surface. In groups of about 20-50 feet wide,..looking over the lake you could see maybe a dozen just in your view,..seems like the lake was filled with crappie,.

Could drag a spinner thru then without catching one, you could catch as many as you wanted,.

Question,..why were they doing this? i don't think it was a spawning effort.

[rebelrn2001]

I’ve seen that before too. My bet is there’s baitfish schooled there that they are after.

[gbin]

We did a lot of crappie fishing when I was a kid growing up in MN, and we were always on the lookout for that phenomenon. I don't know for a certainty why it happens, but I've always believed that the swirl of a school of them right at the surface - which we called a "crappie roil" - was due to them very actively feeding on bait fish or insects there. In any event the crappies are ridiculously easy to catch while they're doing it, as you mentioned. Always seemed to me that it happened most often in the spring and fall.

In the center of the attached picture you can see it happening on one of my ponds. Not a very big roil, but then I didn't stock all that many black crappies in the pond and it was only the year before, so the population hasn't yet taken off.

Gerry

[dvl2700]

Just started fishing Crappie a few years ago. I see it in the fall on my sonar where the fish are near the surface. Have picked up several by long lining light jigs behind the boat.
Thinking of trying my in line planer boards to bring the bait to the side so the boat does not spook them, but I am sure the crappie would not trip the boards and am not sure how far they would get pulled back. Maybe have to try one more time before the water gets too cold and they go back deep.
dvl2700

Not sure in your lake they spook easily,..but in the one I fish its not hard to get near enough to them and cast into the pile,..again generally get one in every cast or two,..maybe because there is a lot of speedboat traffic all summer they are used to noise and motion,(?)

[muskyman73]

Have you ever noticed when the crappie bunch up in shallow water in the spring time that you can smell them ? I routinely find them this way only in the spring time.