Chad Watts of Firefly Marine and Outdoors spent a morning on Sardis Lake looking for bass and crappie with very little success. As he kept fishing, Watts tried several areas but finally located a pattern after finding shad and bait balls off riprap walls and rock banks.
“We pulled up into one area that had deep water adjacent to riprap and rocky points and banks,” Watts said. “The afternoon heated up with the sunshine, and fish started moving up on rocky banks and riprap as the water warmed and baitfish moved shallow. “
If you are looking for some hot crappie action, then look no further than Sardis Lake. I spent a morning on the lake with a couple of veteran bass and crappie anglers, Chad Watts and Ron Stallings, who located some nice crappie on a specific pattern the day before.
“We’ve been watching the bait get pushed up against some of these rock walls and cubby holes in the coves and the crappie have been moving up and are feasting on them,” said Ron Stallings of TTI Blakemore lures. “We’ve been throwing Blakemore Team Crappie Tamer lures and just absolutely wacked them. Yesterday afternoon we caught and released 41 crappie after we found the pattern.”
Watts and Stallings decided to start our day working an area where they had located crappie the day before and they actually enlarged their catch area as the wind changed and more fish moved into similar areas.
Shad schools
Stallings noticed what he thought were several shad schools under the surface up ahead of their boat, and Watts confirmed it when he saw the schools of shad on his Garmin electronic unit. Stallings cast just past the visible shad school and nailed a crappie when he swam the black and chartreuse Road Runner lure through the area.
We hadn’t gone far when Watts cast out and nailed another crappie along the rip rap bank. As they continued working the rocks, they continued getting bites and catching crappie. The fish were staging in 9 to 12 feet off the shallow water ledge as the water continued warming and they moved right up to the shoreline.
Their main technique was casting the single spinner Crappie Tamer lure right at the edge of the water and working it slowly back to the boat. Sometimes the bite would come fast and sometimes they would bite a few feet off the bank in deeper water.
After catching more than a few slabs on his spinning rod and reel, Watts told me to get up on the front of the boat and fish a while. We hadn’t gone too far before the action started for me as well.
“Wham!” a slab crappie nailed my lure and the fight was one. This time the crappie struck within a few feet of the shoreline and fought so hard I thought it might have been a spotted bass. We didn’t go too much further when another lunker crappie slammed my black and chartreuse Crappie Tamer and the fight was on again. The crappie were moving even shallower and you might get bit near the shoreline or 10 feet out slightly deeper.
The crappie continued biting all three of our jigs and we never went far without getting bit.
Watts and Stalling were both using lightweight spinning rods and reels with 4-pound Gamma line. It was just the ticket to cast to the shallow water crappie and strong enough to reel them in without fear of breaking off. If someone got the Road Runner stuck in a rock or crevice, they would simply pop that rod back and forth a couple of times and that was usually all it took to spring it loose.
Bank fishing
Don’t have a boat? Don’t worry. You can still catch crappie at Sardis. I watched several local bank anglers fishing off rip rap points and catching good-sized crappie on jig and cork rigs, and some anglers were using a jig and cork tipped with a live minnow.
Several anglers were strategically fishing from the rocks on the bank at various places in the coves as well. During my time on the water over two days, I watched several anglers on the same bank catching crappie from their chosen spots.
Still others were fishing on the edge of the water along the rocks on the dam area catching them as they worked the shoreline.
Whether you want to fish from a boat or the bank, you can catch crappie on live bait, jigs, or spinner rigs. And of course anglers with forward-facing sonar can locate and catch crappie along the ledges, drop-offs and along break lines. More importantly, where you find schools of bait in these areas.
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