Winter makes fishing more enjoyable, full of adventure and thrill. Spending time on frozen lakes and cold streams will help you get close to nature. It also helps you to release stress and feel lighter. This guide will teach you how to catch crappie on a fly rod in winter.
This informational guide contains a few tips that will easily help you catch crappie with a fly rod in winter. Let’s move on to catching crappie in winter with the help of fly rods.
How to catch crappie on a fly rod in winter?
The crappies are not as active in winter as in summer or spring. This makes them move a little, making it difficult to catch them. Team fishingarc tried three methods to catch crappie on a fly rod in winter.
After successful results, we presented these methods as useful and expert tips. The tips for catching crappie on a fly rod in winter are:
- Find the crappie in winter
- Bring the right fly rod
- Use colorful lures for crappie
- Lightly prepare the hooks
- Catch the crappie in the evening
- Slow your casting in winter
Find the crappie in winter
The first and most helpful tip for crappie is to find their location in the water. I know most of you will think this is obvious, but it is perhaps the most critical thing.
In winter, the crappie slows down and becomes inactive. So, finding the location to catch crappie on a fly rod in winter is extremely important.
You can follow some expert rules to find the location of the crappie. You can look at different variables like the distance to the bottom of the depth of the water to determine whether you’ll find crappie or not.
You can also get a fish finder from the market that will assist you in finding the location where you can catch crappie on a fly rod in winter.
Once you find the location, you can cast your lure to catch crappie with a fly rod. So the most important thing in catching crappie with a fly rod is their underwater detection or finding.
Bring the right fly rod
A fly rod is the main gadget or tool for catching crappie. Winter is the time to use light fly rods and light fly lines because it makes it easy for crappie to bite them.
For catching crappie in winter, the lighter rods with slow action and the down-weight rods are better. Selecting the perfect rod always affects the cast’s accuracy and helps it oscillate downward.
It creates a bend that straightens the crappie in winter.
Use colorful lures for crappie
Colorful lures and live minnows are the best food to attract crappies. The lures and baits used in winter are available in yellow, pink, white, purple, green, orange, and brown.
All these colors attract the crappie in winters when their metabolism works very slowly. They try to eat these minnows or lures and get trapped.
Lightly prepare the hooks
The crappie is difficult to cast in winter, and these are very sensitive fish species on the planet. There is a possibility that the lips of crappie can be injured if you use fast action or quick casting methods.
Prepare hooks that will not tear the mouth of the crappie apart, and retrieve the line slowly. When you catch the crappie, carefully remove it from the hook and store it in a solid container.
Catch the crappie in the evening
Our fishing experience will benefit you by giving some useful tips, and the timing of catching is one of them. The evening hours are ideal for catching crappie on a fly rod in winter.
You will catch a lot of fish this time. In the low light and at dusk, the crappies are more hungry. They often come to the surface to feed and haunt live baits or minnows.
Always keep this thing in mind, because you can catch more crappie in the evening as compared to day time.
Slow your casting in winter
Slowing your casting in winter means you have to slow your feed presentation to the crappie in winter. Crappies are not active and would not fight the lures more aggressively.
So you must slow down your casting and be more attentive while throwing the line. As soon as the crappie bites, slowly retrieve the line.
Conclusion
Fishing is a versatile activity as there are many fish that one can catch in saltwater or freshwater. Every fish is different from others in nature, so it is appropriate that we plan as per the fish.
In this guide, we have provided some tips that can enable you to catch crappie on a fly rod in winter. These tips have always helped us catch more crappie, and they will surely help you as well. Feel free to share your experience of catching crappie in the winter season. Cheers!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best time to catch crappie on a fly rod in winter?
Winter’s most successful time to catch crappie on a fly rod includes evening hours.
When are crappies more hungry in winter?
The crappies are usually more hungry in low light and at dusk than at other times of the day.