I had the opportunity to fish for black crappies in eastern Manitoba recently. Crappies are definitely a really fun fish to catch on ultralight rods. When you’re on a big school, these fish will provide fast action. Not to mention they provide excellent table fare.
I’ve fished for them for years. However this is the first time I used my Lowrance Active Target for them. This was quite an experience that really changed the way I fished for crappies.
Equipment
Generally crappies eat very small items but they are often in deep water. Tiny tungsten jigs with small plastics are the way to catch them. Generally they aren’t too picky as long as it can fit in their mouth. Unless I’m feeling very ambitious, the presentation should be less than an inch long. Tungsten has very high density compared to lead allowing it to get to the bottom fast. An ultra light rod is necessary to detect light bites.
While I refer to Active Target throughout this post, any forward facing sonar like Garmin Livescope or Humminbird Mega Live will suffice. Active Target just happens to be the one that I use.
I heavily rely on my bow mounted trolling motor to work in conjunction with the live sonar. I will mention how I utilize it later.
The Old Days
When looking for fall crappies, 2D sonar is the absolute minimum requirement. Crappies school up in open basins in Canadian shield lakes and do not relate to any structure whatsoever. They can often be suspended so knowing their depth is critical. Fortunately 2D sonar is very affordable as a basic unit can be found under $200.
I used to use 2D sonar to find crappies. I would drive the boat over the basins until I found a school. Since 2D sonar only displays historical data by the time I saw them, I was already past them. I would kick the motor into reverse to get back onto them. I could complement the 2D with down imaging to get greater detail of what I was seeing.
I definitely caught many crappies this way and it definitely works well. However there were some limitations with this method. I would not truly realize these limitations until I tried using live sonar technology for the first time.
Using Live Sonar
This is the first year that I got to use Active Target. I’ve always heard about the benefits of forward facing sonar from Livescope users. It was a no-brainer that it would be useful for crappies.
To find them I would rotate the Active Target transducer while moving the boat with the bow mount trolling motor. I mount my Active Target transducer on a turret instead of mounting on the trolling motor. This lets me rotate it freely regardless of where the trolling motor is pointed. I usually slowly turn it back and forth between the 9 o’clock to the 3 o’clock position.
Schools of crappies are easy to identify. This time however, I could count the number of crappies in each school. A tiny school of crappies is often not worth the hassle as we would have to quickly go back to searching. Also it was easier to identify the size of crappies. Schools of tiny crappies are not what we want. This would have been difficult with only 2D sonar, down and side imaging.
Once a school of crappies is located I point the trolling motor in the same direction as the transducer. My Minn Kota Terrova has Autopilot which locks the direction of the trolling motor to a single direction. That way it automatically steers the motor directly at the school of crappies after pointing the trolling motor at the school of crappies. This accurately took me onto the school of crappies. Once the boat is positioned over the school, I can use the spot lock feature to stay on them right away.
We would then hammer the crappies until the school thinned out, which was very easy to determine with the live sonar. Then we would repeat the process to find another school.
It was also interesting to see pike appear on the screen. Pike feed on the crappies so we saw them swoop downwards into the schools of crappies. The crappies would scatter which necessitated finding another school of crappies.
Final Words
It took a little practice but I eventually figured out how to effectively use live sonar for crappies. The biggest benefit of live sonar is the improvement in decision making. We could pick the schools we wanted. We could move once the school was thinned out. We could be absolutely certain that we were on top of the fish. I’ve never had a crappie outing where we were so decisive.
I will admit though despite the benefits, it’s very expensive. It would also be somewhat impractical to use if you were backcountry fishing as the setup would be heavy and require a lot of power.
No matter what kind of electronics you have on the boat, you will be able to find the crappies. However having live sonar like Active Target really makes things a lot easier. It’s definitely one of those situations where it’s a game changer.
