crappie search question

hey we found a pond with real nice bluegills and bass and catfish, but they say there aren't any crappie.ha ha, we caught 1. real nice 11 incher, so my question to you all is this; you want to get some more crappie from here, but youwant to know if the 1 you caught was a fluke or there are more....what search lure would you use to try to find if there are more in there?

If theres one I imagine there would be more.... Not necessarily A LOT more though. A good search bait IMO would be any type of a small spinner bait such as a 1/16oz. rooster tail or even smaller panther martin. Some more help would be size of pond and depth to see where you would be locating these fish this time of year. Good Luck let us know how you do!

Maybe a couple of questions first. How big is the pond ,say using a football size idea ?
Is the water real clear and also is there alot of weeds around the shoreline ?
There I'm sure more crappie for seldom do you find just one.

I notice your post was in October and that was the start of changeover period which places crappie all over the place in depths.

In early spring (April) I would start taking the surface water temperature with just a plain thermometer.
Pre spawn would be from 50 * to 64*. I would then start to use a small search bait casting.

My favorite in early spring is a pony spinner bait from DWAZ Lures( Can be found by search engine) in 1/32 oz. size. I paint the head black with white background eyes and a red dot in the center of the eye.
I then from Charlie Brewer Slider jig order their 1 inch slider bodies either in cotton candy or blue with speckles. This lure will be less than $1.50 to set up.

If there is any way say in the afternoons on a sunny day when the temperature is right wade out to be able to paraell cast just off the shoreline and wind slow, for the fish are just starting to wake up and will not chase a jig far. I would try all around the shoreline with this method, by the way I use 4 pound test line.

Record the crappies you catch and the length, this will help in figuring out the year class of the fish.

I did a project once with a buddy of mine where we took a pond that was low on crappies and stancked 3 or 4 pallets in the water just wading out to about our waist. We put a series of 7 groups of pallets and left them for four years. It gave the fingerling crappies a chance to hide and grow instead of being eaten. Now that pond is a goldmine loaed with crappies.

Remember to keep your offerings small in early spring and even durning the spawn try the cast method for the greatest number of crappie will be close to shore.

Hope this helps you out , you have enough time to gather the items needed before spring.

Have Dave at Dwaz Lures send you a free catalog for he is one of my suppliers.

www.sliderfishing.com
is where you can check out the small sliders


Good Fishing and Happy Holidays,

JimG

i appreciate the info, but the pond is odnr managed. will try the wading out part in the spring, lots of weed cover out to about 10-15 feet from bank. i looked at the website too. no need to order catalog, it is downloadable from his site. cool plastics. i may have fished a few of them, just didnt know what they were called.

If the pond is managed by ODNR I'd get a hold of your country Wildlife officer and ask him to find out if a shocking survey was ever done in the pond and you can obtain a copy download of the results. If it was done that will tell you the est. number of crappies.
Just a thought.

JimG