I'm a bass fisherman that has decided to try my hand at crappie some when I stay overnight at the lake. I have been catching a few here and there lately on 1/16oz tube jigs but last night I couldn't buy a bite. I was on them too it seemed. Here are a few pics of my fish finder. I tried every color of tube jig I had as well as a white curly tail and two color hair jigs. I only caught one crappie in about 2 hours before I got the pillow out and slept till the sun came out. The only thing I can think of is that it was so dead calm and still that my jigs stood out too much. Maybe I needed some minnows since it was so calm it was easy for the crappie to tell they weren't real? Anyway just frustrated because I found them and couldn't catch them. Heck they were busting minnows on the top of the water around my light I guess I should have just netted a few. haha

what are actually the fish on that chart? i don't have electronics but i am curious

what lake were you on. right now most fish are being caught in 4 to 8 ft of water. looks like you were in a mess of sand bass should have tried a spoon. how deep were you fishing?

Yeah, I gree with Patmando. Looks Like Whites to me.

ye sir, I could be wrong, but those don't look like the crappie I see on my graph

When I fish for whites and hybrid/stripers, when the screen does that, its on. I agree with them and think those where whites that you seen on your screen.

Thats alan henry. No whites here. We don't have any other fish that would look like that other than crappie or bass.

I guess they could be large gizzard shad but thats about the only other option other than crappie. Any AH fisherman have opinions, I know they weren't bass, the sonar returns weren't strong enough, I do enough dropshotting to know a bass on the sonar.

oh yeah - depth I was fishing. I started by dropping to the bottom and then reeling up 3 rounds which is about 9 feet on my reel (so about 26ft,) and then I would reel up half a turn every minute or so till I got to the surface trying to get a feel for where the fish were biting. The one crappie I caught came about 15ft down. I got several really light nibble type taps too when I first started but no real bites until that fish.

Shad would be my guess too Balata.. But if the shad were there

Ive seen the crappie get outta dodge when the big gizzard come through,but most of the summer,game is on when we get the threadfin to the boat.. We've been fishing in close to 30 ' also,but most of the fish come from between 8-14 '

maybe garfish or carp? I hear the garfish are schooling right now.

if you caught a crappie at 15 ft in with that on the graph, you were probably right.. they were crappie. But, from my experiece crappie dont always act like sandies when schooled up feeding. Had they been sandies he would have caught a load of them, they would have hit whatever jig or curlytail he dropped. I have experienced the same thing (though it didnt look exactly like his graph looks) crappie under me feeding on shad..didnt want jigs untill i put on something that looked more like a shad. one of my favorite plastics is the 1.5in Fin-S Shad (pearl white). I caught crappie out of a school that were following a school of sand bass feeding on shad in 30ft of water on Ray Rob this time last year. Caught first 2 on accident on a slab.. put on Fin-S Shads' and loaded them up. Next time you see them and it seems like they are doing that, get something down there that imitates a shad a little better than your normal jigs. Good luck sir

He's on AH there are no whites, well I've seen one caught so I can't say none. Those are crappie for sure. If it was a school of big shad your screen would have blacked out, and you wouldn't have got those nice pretty returns. They say the shad in AH ate all the bass . The problem with fishing at night is that they can turn on and off for a few hours at a time. It's such a pain to stay mobile at night and move to fish that are feeding. I hate to say it but your experience is pretty normal for AH.

Here's something you can try that works for me. Try turning your sensitivity up until you can see the bait balls under your boat then fish about 6 inches to a foot right beneath them. I try not to worry too much about finding what level the fish are holding. Those fish that are feeding are darting up into the bottom of that ball. Find the bottom of the ball find the fish, imo.

Jig fishing is a lot harder at night, especially on those suspended fish. Get some crappie nibbles they'll help. I'm also a fan of mealworms. Also since you're fishing over bait balls for suspended fish, rig up two jigs to your main line and fish different colors and depths at the same time. Don't do it in cover or you're guaranteed to loose a lot of jigs. It depends on the night, but live bait can be deadly at night. I prefer to use fresh caught shad but minnows do so so. I can't even begin to relate how much small shad will outfish minnows. A baby shad at the right level usually gets hammered as soon as it gets to the strike zone. A minnow might sit there all night and get pecked to pieces.

Another thing that might help is sacrifice a chicken or goat or something to the fishing gods. Make sure you only spit your chew out the right side of your face. Try wearing your shoes on the opposite foot. Get a case of lucky rabbit's feet. Personally I keep a leprechaun chained up in the basement. You're going to have to go above and beyond if you want to catch any amount of crappie on AH.

Just my 2 cent's. It may all be bad advice but it's what works for me anyway.

If he was anchored the lines could be stretched some depending on his chart speed but I think I agree on the whites. If it were crappie i like to think they would be more stacked. Also looks like he is in 34ft of water. I agree on the 8ft, 4ft may be a little sahllow to try to use the lights without spooking to many crappie's.

No whites in AH..Bass crappie catfish only. Trying to explain fishing on AH would take a day and half. Those that have fished it know what I mean. Imagine a narrow 50-150 foot deep by, 11 mile long canyon, with steep arsed walls and steppes. Cover every inch of it in mesquite trees and brush. Now fill it 3/4 full with water and you have AH. To get to shallow water on AH requires the crappie travel miles to get up in the creek arms. Also the front end of your boat can be in 8 foot of water and your back end is in 35. Honestly it can be a really tricky lake.

Divers looking for a drown victim recently found 38 degree water at 40 feet in the middle of summer, 3 miles from the boat ramp. Now tell me that ain't a weird lake.

Thanks for the advice raiderland. Like I say I am just learning the crappie fishing out here and I'm just doing it really to pass the time during the nights I'm staying overnight at the lake. I like to bass fish at night too but standing up that long and also my trolling motor batteries are a concern when I'm out for 2 days or so. I'm gonna keep at it and I might get a small mesh cast net to get some of those small shad next time. I can't believe how many of them there are. A couple weeks ago on a calm evening I saw hundreds of small schools of shad probably 3-4 feet across ranging to 12ft across in the back of rocky. There were probably millions and millions of those 1-2 inch shad back there. No wonder it can be hard to catch fish out there they have all the food they ever want. haha.