I have always fished deep water for winter crappie. I have read several posts saying folks catch crappie in creeks in relatively shallow water, so I thought why not, it would be easier than fishing the deep water structure. Here is the problem I have ran into. There are no fish in the creeks I'm fishing in. Yes, it could be my angling skills, but I believe I can work a jig and float with the best of 'em. Now, since I'm new to the winter creek concept is there only certain creeks that this will work in? If so, other than trial and error, how can I determine which creeks hold crappie during the winter? If it helps I mainly fish Texoma and Ray Roberts. And when I'm creek fishing Texoma, I usually am at the wildlife refuge. thanks for any help in clearing up this mystery.

Try fishing off the bottom, they dont always want a float. Gotta be crappie in that creek.

Try fishing off the bottom, they dont always want a float. Gotta be crappie in that creek.

As a general rule all major creeks that are feeding those lakes should have crappie in them during the Fall/Winter/Spring. Buck creek, Spring creek and the Trinity river on RR all come to mind that hold crappie. I will tell you that when it comes to finding crappie in the creeks location is EVERYTHING. I cannot stress that enough. Not every stickup or bend will hold fish. I have found that submerged brush hold fish best but it is hard to find from the bank and you kind of have to get lucky. Not only is location everything but conditions have to be right. You cannot have too much rain (like this week) and it needs to be cold (like a couple of weeks ago) in order to maximize your chance of finding them stacked up in the creeks. It also helps to change depths constantly, especially if you know you are fishing an area that has fish. Sometimes a couple of inches makes all the difference in catching none and catching them every cast. Trail and error is the best process for learning the fish's tendencies in a certain creek. I hope this helps.

^^^ What he said lol

I pretty much always fish under a float from shore. How do you fish off bottom? Cast out and just slow retrieve while dragging bottom?

I fish out of a kayak, so I usually vertical jig it or slow drift and bump the jig along the bottom. Didn't realize you were on the bank. Unless you know the exact depth to set the bobber for the bottom yes I would cast and slow retrieve to fish the bottom.

Thanks!

Thanks. That helps. I only tried two creeks at the wildlife refuge (Texoma). One time last week. The weather conditions were warm. The water looked great. I tried a smaller creek that has an average depth of about 5' and another creek that was about 12' and all I caught was a 4lb channel cat. I guess I'll wait for colder
Conditions and try it again. After the creeks clear up that is.

I always wondered how far back in the creek the crappie would go. Like a mile or more?

If not getting any bite where you expect fish might hold, try smaller jigs like1/32 or 1/64 and try different colors. Also it's good to use some kind of fish attract

I've set out several times trying to answer this question on my kayak. For some creeks the answer is well over 5 miles. I'd at least try any stretch of creek that had "holes" more than 4' deep even if it is 5 miles or more upstream and there are steep winding banks. However a shallow stream flowing over flat farm land with banks less that 8' deep banks can get cold pretty quickly at night and often be devoid of crappie. Still sometimes shad and crappie will be there.

My current opinion is that temperature is just part of the equation, maybe 25% of the answer or so unless water temps are close to 40 and then it becomes more important. Knowing that we didn't really have lakes until people started damming up rivers, I figure it is in the shad's DNA to just move around up or down stream just like they would in a river system. There would be no instinct to head south towards the dam. Perhaps plankton has something to do with shad showing up on the creeks too. There has got to be less food for shad given the reduced sunlight so they are "grazing" in the most distant "pastures" where the increased nutrients in the water might offset the lack of sunlight. Shad don't stay in the very warmest water but rather in the most consistent temperature water where there is adequate depth and food.

I usually catch them around 2-3 miles up the creeks from the lakes. Again it depends on how cold it is for how far they will go up. I have found that the fish will stop and stack up at a certain point depending on how cold it gets.

We've been duck hunting in some sloughs off of Sam Rayburn. They're fed by a creek that makes it to the lake a few miles down. They're at least 4 ft deep in most places. Pretty hairy crossing them in waders. Creeks is only about 20ft wide. May take a pole with me and give it a try. I could scout for new hunting spots while I'm at it!