I normally transform my rig from crappie rig to duck hunting reg in the winter. But I'm thinking of keeping my crappie set-up for duck hunting, and just hunting less crazy places, and do duck hunting and crappie fishing on my camping adventures. So what is the winter pattern for Crappie in the winter? Can you catch them on brush piles? Depth?

Crappie do a few things in the winter. They go up creeks, get on bridges, go deep in open water and brush. Just depends on your means and how you like to fish. I spend majority of the winter in the creeks. You are out of the elements and catch plenty of nice fish on jig and corks.

Lane Palmer wrote up a good article on annual crappie paterns and posted some time ago. If you can find it, it holds true for most of the time.