Crappie Shallow in the creeks in the Winter?

I used to hear that during the winter when the water gets cold crappie can be found up in the mouths of small feeder creeks. Can someone tell if this is true and or if there are any guidelines to follow or tips?

Yes & no. It depends on the characteristics(hope I spelled it Correctly)of the Creeks that feed into a lake. In winter we all know that shad are looking for a certain comfort level by degree to stay alive.If the water is too cold they will die so to avoid death they will move to where the water is warmer & some creeks offer them this sanctuary because of their bottom composition while others don`t.If the creek offers warmer water than the lake,and the shad move in then so will the Crappie.

What fishbonz said. Here around Denton it's hit or miss. I have only found 1 creek so far this winter holding crappie and it has water flowing. In the past hickory creek produced but only when the water is flowing. I think that has something to do with it. So find a creek in your area that feeds into a lake but also has some flow to it. Stagnant creeks have never produced for me before. Good luck.

It depends on the creek. If the creek only has shallow water they will be shallow but if it has deeper water they will be deeper. Conditions play a huge role in where and how many you catch on a given day. With time you know the conditions that are best for going out and catching a mess of creek fish. Lots of fish in the creeks around DFW right now. Just needing the water to clear for them to start back biting.

It was funny a few days ago I was trying to catch shad using a castnet from a creek, but instead I kept catching crappie after crappie. I caught (and returned) several times more crappie that shad from the creek in question.

I don't think that's correct regarding stagnation and water flow exactly. Having a boat with a graph with side scan takes the mystery out of it for me though. I know places where they stack up in current and other places where they stack up in slack water. When they stack up well either way it is the easiest crappie fishing there is, the colder the better.

I think shad have no idea where they are at in any body of water to be honest but rather they simply move faster or slower in a random direction based on various conditions. (this is what many simple animals do but I forget the biological term) So if it is too hot or too cold they will swim faster and if it is Goldie Locks sort of conditions they will slow down. So if it is a slough or a creek that does not stretch back deeply with a depth greater than 3', the shad ping pong around until they all ping pong out of a spot when it is too cold. It's sort of like those robot vacuum cleaners. Imagine places where the robot would get stuck and never be "smart" enough to randomly find themselves back to their recharging base, like some long twisted narrow corridor. Usually if a creek goes back more than 1/2 mile with a depth or 3 feet or more from a main lake it will always have crappie or at least I've rarely found one that didn't when I had a boat with a graph to "cheat". Now getting them to bite well can be another story.

There are factors though. Sometimes it is as simple as sandbass taking over a creek and pushing the crappie out or to other spots. Sometimes cold current "pushes" out shad, while warm current "sucks" them in.

Creek crappie fishing sucks. It's not worth your time.

I prefer fishing them on the deeper brush and drop offs in the winter. Use your electronics to find them. I'm not usually fishing stuff I can see sticking above the water. As the water warms up some you can find them a little shallower in the creeks.

I have some openings this January for winter creek trips. Hit me up if you want a tutorial. We will hit it hard again through the sand bass spawn.

Ditches on the North West side of the lake gets the most sunlight and stays warmer the longest. Water is shallower and warms up faster. So the bait fish will be there, you can confirm with a decent fish finder.

Theres nothing like walking deep into the woods and tearing up crappie from the bank.

This is a great subject! I enjoyed this topic and have learned some from reading the posts. I've heard the few creeks at Hubbard creek are amazing during winter but never have heard ppl doing good at my home lake, Fort Phantom which has a creek with similiar depth (about 10 feet in middle). The creek right now at Fort Phanton is almost 8-10 degrees colder than the main lake so I don't buy the theory that the creeks are "warmer" as a blanket statement for all lakes during winter. I do wonder if Crappie move into these creeks as we get consistently warmer days since the shallower more stagnant wind protect creeks warm faster just as they are cooling faster the last few months and currently?

If the Shad move into the creek in the winter the Crappie will also.

Can’t wait! Yep.. great read

just like the spawn, water temp has nothing to do with where wintertime crappie are located.

Water temp has everything to do with both.

ha

Checked out a few "crappie" creeks yesterday that were either partially frozen or completely covered in ice!

Went by white rock creek today.. no rods in hand!? On the clock! Did not see any crappie pulled out but saw some huge gizzards pulled.. all snagged.. looks like close to game on.?! When the the rock starts showing some love means better hit your favorite creek.. just saying

im not kidding. Been at winter crappie in creeks and on the lakes for years. I’d rather hit the lake by the dam in the winter and hit the sandbass run in spring.

http://www.in-fisherman.com/biology/science-of-shad-winterkill/

water temp doesnt get cold enough long enough in texas for temp to have much of an affect on shad. I couldnt count how many times I recall reading that shad start to die off at around 52 degrees, and the science in the above article proves this is simply not true. if water temp dictated where shad were all winter, I could go to one creek on waco thats always warmer than everywhere else, and there should be so many crappie back there you could walk across them.
Same thing with spawn, ive heard legends like charlie pack, to whitey outlaw saying that crappie always go to warmer water to spawn, and will be in shallow water, NOT TRUE. You can watch old videos
of charlie pack fishing creeks on lake waco, and not catching fish, scratching his head while saying, with the water temp at 60, they should be here. yet they werent.
I believe the availability of a food source for the shad such as plankton and daphnia, (ever heard of them)? have a much larger part in where shad and crappie will be, all thru the year. Daphnias rise and fall in the water column according to sunlight penetration . As humans we tend to think in terms of what would be acceptable survival conditions for us, not fish. Ive seen goldfish frozen solid in a birdbath for a whole day, and when it thawed out, they were swimming around like nothing happened. Todd Huckabee made a u tube vid and said if it depended on water temp, the crappie up north in canada would never spawn, and he is right.
Crappie are usually never too far away from thier food source, and shad are never too far away from thier food source, no matter what the water temp.
Same with summertime fishing in the blazing heat, folks think crappie are sitting on top of the piles in the morning because its 5 degrees cooler in the first couple feet of surface water than it is at high noon. The temp has nothing to do with it, its the light penetration and where the food source are hanging at.
Just some things to think about when you fish a creek for 3 days and dont catch a fish, but its 5 degrees warmer than everywhere else youve fished on the lake.

Well I have found that to not be the case. I can promise you with this below freezing weather the last few days, there has been some shad die off. To each their own sir.

I have run across it one time in the winter on sunny days in the back of a creek when fishing jerkbaits for bass and start smashing big crappie in 5-8 foot of water. Water temps around 47. Had to bump the stump with the jerkbait.

Wow I wondered for years what those dang things were that looked like plankton or maybe mayfly hatch, mussel eggs heck I never heard of ...Daphnia... I searched for hours one day,I looked at so many pics, ask question to friends and even called TPW after I had caught some live in a water bottle, They didn't seem interested in helping at all. So I gave up. I have seen these thing get so thick in swarms they look like someone dumped a 5 gallon bucket of muddy water in the lake ..I have also seen catfish working thick swarms from the underside and gulls working over the top. It took a second or 2 to figure why we were getting hits or catching hybrids casting into the swarms we didn't start catching fish until we down scaled or lures and then we only caught catfish. It was years ago on Lake Ray Hubbard when all this happen.. I had kept detailed records for 30 years or more starting back in the late '70s form all the lakes I fished..It was always around late the first of March of every year when you I would see them around the old Power plant discharge area {mostly back when it ran).. We also started seeing them all across the lake on warm days up into March but not in swarms, just specs in the water . Most people probably never noticed the "specs" in the clear water ..Since they are mostly clear in their body.. They are hard to see unless the suns high over head and you are really looking for them, easy to see if you suck up a few in a empty water bottle or minnow net .

Thanks leanin post you solved one of my old mysteries.

I think the most important thing for a fisherperson can do is be open to something new try and learn something new every day.As I get older its seems harder to do but today I did


I have seen the same things in creeks, we have broken 1/2 ice sheets to get into some of the creeks above Lake Lavon and literally killed them in 5 to 8 fow in January many years ago. It was good ever year as long as water levels were high enough to get into creeks from the lake.

I find here on Cedar Creek Lake that we catch crappie in December,January,febuary regardless of water temps in 8 to 14 fow range. Im sure it may not be where the majority of the crappie hang out but they are there in good numbers many times..Thx guys for all the info.

can I ask, have you EVER seen thousands of dead shad floating on out texas lakes in winter ? , I dont know of a dead fish that doesnt float. If shad are dying off, someone, somewhere, somehow, should see dead floaters somewhere.. Now im sure people will say oh,, the birds eat them , or the fish gobble them up so fast that nobody ever sees the event, and I dont think that would fly.
I have always tried to keep an open mind, if you can find large numbers of dead shad, plz post pics and I will believe it.
Carey thorn fishes creeks alot around dallas, Ive followed him since he was guiding out of the back of his blue pick up truck, and read many of his articles. I cannot ever recall him posting a pic, of dead shad on any of the creeks he fishes or in the lake.
If im wrong , show me.
I have NEVER heard of or seen any guide or fisherman on any lake or creek finding shad frozen in ice, floating, caught dead in castnets, ect.

were these snagged shad dead or alive?

I dont make this stuff up in my spare time.. haha

All Alive and they are huge, been like this for almost 3-4 weeks and people cut them up and tear yellow bass from WR creek.

Here's a couple articles that might be enlightening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threadfin_shad

http://www.in-fisherman.com/biology/science-of-shad-winterkill/

There was a significant shad die off on Texoma a few yrs ago when water temps were below 38 degrees F for several weeks. The guide reports I read in the Whites-hybrid-striper section back then were talking about the die off and not being able to find any bait.

I've noticed when I have shad in a 5 gal bucket and they start to die, they first sink to the bottom. Someone might try that with this cold water, catch some threadfin shad, place in bucket, keep water cold and see what happens when they start to die. There's a definite difference in tolerance between threadfin and gizzard shad.

Could also PM some of the guides operating on Texoma and Tawakoni and ask what their observations have been with winter kill of shad.

heres a question, did the fisherman just ASSUME that there was a massive shad die off because they could not locate the baitfish or did they find tangible proof. with all of the go pro movie producers, smart phone photographers, self proclaimed biologist frequenting our lakes SOMEONE should have pictures of this. heck even UFO enthusiasts have pictures.
If the baitfish die in cold water, when the lakes in the north of the country thaw, there should be millions of dead fish floating around every year. There are lakes in canada covered with a couple feet of ice, that big rigs drive over, these lakes are frozen for several months!!! Birds by the millions would gather to feast on this phenomenon, and it would be big news, yet ive never heard or seen of this.

if you buy this then ^^^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNlMzNUDM8s

Same here...enough so it made us pull out the crappie jigs etc and strictly fish for crappie the rest of the day.

lp, unfortunately, I'm not as smart as you are , but if you'll give me some time, I'll try to catch up.

Yes, I've seen it on Lavon a few years back and the catfishing was great! I think I have pictures somewhere? I witnessed dozens if not hundreds of birds tearing into threadfin shad floating up in an old clay pit pond earlier this year when things got cold about 2 weeks ago. It's a matter of percentages, not all of the threadfin die in the lakes. The small ones float up first.

How can you assume its the cold that killed them in the old clay pit pond? they also need oxygen, food, the right water. a few hundred dead shad with possibly a few dozen birds around, come on,. Ive seen thousands of birds feeding on LIVE shad that have been pushed to the top by herding sandbass. You want to know what the real problem is, nobody likes to eat crow, because they have been repeating myths that they have been told for many years. many things happen with massive fish kills, smell is one thing, when the fish start rotting after thaw, many complain abt it, it is widespread news. airplanes and helicopters see these events.
Many of the shad simply get eaten, but fisherman have trouble locating the huge schools they saw in summer and fall (when fish feed like crazy),, and just assume, the shad have died off. JMO
One highly regarded fisherman states that his opinion is the shad have died off due to freezing to death, then everybody and thier brother starts repeating the same thing, true or not ,, ha

From what I've seen the very small threadfin will get disoriented in sub 40 degree water and sometimes slowly swim sideways up to the surface. When we plop them in a heated bait tank they perk up pretty well for starving or sick fish or whatever. When we stop heating the water and it drops closer to 40 the shad start to die again, the smaller ones first.

Crappie will stick to spots they like where there are no threadfin shad in the middle of winter. I'll strongly agree with that. You can catch a lot of fish in those areas / situations. Still for those looking for a winter fishing easy catching bonanza for crappie I'd look for schools of threadfin.