Good Morning Everyone!

I have been fishing my whole life, but only crappie fishing for the last few years. I got my first limit of fish last winter (50 fish in Louisiana) and my first Fall-catch of 25 BEFORE I got a livescope.

Since I did get the new livescope unit about a month ago, it's been a limit of fish every time I go out (if I feel like cleaning that many).

There was so much I learned just the first few times going out that I had been doing wrong that I wanted to see what else people may have learned that we could relay to anyone not using the devices. I keep thinking that if I knew this stuff last year I would have been catching way way more just with the added knowledge about the crappie behavior.

I'll kick it off but please post whatever you've learned also as I know there are probably others like me that come here often looking for advice on how to catch more without active imaging tech:

1. Crappie are often MUCH more scared of noise than you would ever think. I see fish dart away like a bomb went off just because my trolling motor on power 2.5 kicks on when I'm 12 feet away from them.
* My lesson for myself: I should have been setting up much further from spots and casting over them before I moved closer to vertical jig....and I need to oil my fishing chairs more often.

2. Crappie sit on limbs and brush similar to how birds sit on trees above water.
* My lesson for myself: I should have been fishing more aggressively and losing more jigs trying to find them.

3. Crappie will sometimes ignore jigs completely if they don't have nibbles or some kind of scent on the hook.
* My lesson for myself: I should have been using nibbles more often on slow bite days, or maybe all the time.

That the days of standing there jigging up and down were scaring more fish than anything. Seems like small fish love an active presentation and big fish want it DEAD still. They will chase a jig up, but not down. You can raise a fish from 20ft down, and hook him 2ft down. You use to think you had to be on some sort of structure to catch em, and most of the big fish are just out roaming around some part of a river/creek channel, or maybe just a big ole flat. If you are not using a 11/12/13ft rod you are getting way to close to them.

Still nothing wrong with sitting on a pile and picking off fish, but it's sure fun to pick the big one you want.

I've seen several go down for a jig, including 1 yesterday.

I tell people this all the time when they ask what I think about livescope after having it that it feels like every fish I caught before without it was luck. Half or more of the crappie that I catch, I make them bite by pulling the bait up away from them when they see it and they come up and grab it.

Crappie will feed down. This is something that I figured they did but never had proof till livescope.

Crappie move way more than most realize. Sometimes I drop on a fish and it flares and I know it is about to bite.

Re: 1. Example of fish being scared starting about 15' away with a constant running trolling motor

https://youtu.be/hvt6s07ZxZ8

I shouldn't have said never. But you can drop past 6 fish all in one spot at 10ft down to get the one at 12ft down and rarely have I seen them swim down for it.

Certainly agree with the other comments.

1. Amazed at the number of fish you see and most don't bite. Certainly enforces the idea of keep moving and looking for active fish.

2. I have found myself now really working over an area. Use the LS (especially the LVS34) to search for cover and often smaller cover (log, rock, stump) and pick off one or two per piece of small cover.

3. Roaming fish are harder to chase down then what the videos show. I have recently gone from using a 10 to 12 ft pole. Maybe this will help.

4. Never have I been able to find and catch suspended fish in open water until using LS. Now I use a dock shooter with as light a jig as the wind will allow and shoot past them to swim it through.

This is all great stuff in here. The "jigging up and down scares fish" is DEFINITELY true. I've seen big crappie quickly swim away from a 1/32 oz jig that was moving too fast.

The comment about catching fish in open water being much harder also dead-on accurate. They seem to bite much more readily if they're hugged up tight on structure of some kind.

we grew up dead sticking tiny jigs on Fork that we sprayed with attractant on every drop....guess that is why we caught thousands...

Just being able to see their reaction in real time based on the type of presentation (vertical jigging, casting/retrieve, etc) was very enlightening for me. Was vertical jigging yesterday in amongst a big ball of crappie and there was no reaction. When I stopped and held it steady at the depth they were suspended I would get some lookers come up to it but not bite. This went on for a while until I started casting out past them and retrieving fairly fast through them and thats when I started catching them. Yesterday was my first outing since getting my Active Target all set up. Still have some tweaking to do for the transducer pole as far as height but I'm really happy with my investment so far.

Like others said moving the jig usually hurts your presentation. Also I used to hate early spring fishing and Livescope taught me why. Scattered fish in any depth not relating to anything. I think my first Livescope crappie was 2’ down in open water in 22’ FOW. I think they sun themselves in early spring on the surface to warm up. We’ve caught fish so shallow in deep water on Grenada I can’t believe we didn’t see their fins sticking out the water.

Cover water, have a set of some what close small pieces of structure located and don’t stay on one too long.

Stay off em and pitch to em, also I rarely fish them shallow even when others are in spring.

I have only gone 1X with a pal with a mega live. We saw tons of fish stacked up but could not get them to bite in the normal pressured spots even using minnows. We located a single stump in fairly deep water near a hump that I would guess no one would fish because it is so insignificant and had way fewer fish around it but we caught 4 off it. We started looking for small stuff and caught our limit.

Take that for what it's worth, Like I said only done it 1x.

#1 It's not that they "aren't biting" it's mostly that they aren't there.

The first year I used livescope I found a hump that was both covered with brush piles and crappie. I fished it regularly for several months consistently catching limits of crappie. When fall came the fish vanished. Imagine what I would have done without livescope. I would have assumed that they just stopped biting my lure of choice and I would have probably kept trying different lures, presentations, colors etc... and would have wasted hours/days fishing empty brush piles.

#2 Pick off the active/aggressive fish and don't wast time trying to entice fish to bite by changing jigs

I suppose you don't need livescope for this but being able to see the reaction of fish helps re-enforce it. Most of the fish I catch come out of the pile to hit my jig while it is hovering just above the pile or they hit it while hovering on the outer edges near the bottom. As soon as I get to a spot I will immediately see a fish come out and hit my jig. In summer, this will happen only a few times within the first few minutes of reaching that spot and then nothing. In other times of the year I can catch 10 or more before they stop. In either case, once there is no reaction, it's time to move on to the next spot. The supplemental learning to this is color is dramatically overrated. Location, presentation, size/profile are by far the most important factors. I use exactly 2 different jigs all year long ... a Thump Chubby in ghost minnow color on a 1/8 oz pink jig head for 10 months and a white/chart 1/32 oz hair jig in Aug/Sep. I've caught 1205 crappie in the last 12 months and never use anything other than those 2 jigs. Aggressive fish don't care about the 47 colors of jigs you have in your tackle box. I've proven this by tossing the ugliest colors I have (of the same profile) while catching fish on each consecutive cast and they hit every color. Once I had caught all the aggressive fish I then sequenced back through all the different colors and found no takers.

#3 Fine tuning presentations

Many people have already mentioned this. There are 3 presentations that I use and the ability to watch fish react definitely helps pick the most productive one for the day -- although it is mostly seasonal and not a day to day choice. In the summer months when water temps are above 70, it is almost always the hold it as still as possible presentation. The supplemental presentation to the hold is hold it and then pull away to trigger chase and strike. When the water temperature is below 70 but above 60 the pitch and drift over the top presentation works best. When the water temps are below 60 the hold presentation usually starts working best again.

#4 While crappie orient to brush piles, they aren't always in the brush.

This is especially true in the fall but I've seen it in the summer as well. Some of my favorite spots to catch crappie are spots between the piles ... especially when the pile is on a slope. Now I always scan around the pile for fish just hanging out on the bottom away from the structure. I always pitch out in front of the pile before I move over the top of it to catch any fish sitting tight to the bottom in front of the pile.

I found that big crappie will sometimes suspend 10ft from cover that is filled with little fish. Many times these fish are bolt because you run over the top of them getting to the structure.

Size of jig is more important than color. Offer them a 1/8 jig and they will not touch it. Drop down 1/64 jig and they attack it with a vengence.

Crappie can be found at different depths regardless of the time of year. You can catch crappie 20ft deep and 5ft deep at the same time. They are not all at the same depth at the same time.