Lets face the facts here, spring is gone and so is the easy crappie fishing. If you want to catch crappie consistently during the hot summer months your going to have to work for them. A little knowledge will go a long way here. Which is why I am writing this article, to give you that little bit of knowledge that will help you become a productive hot weather crappie killer!

Crappie generally will head for deep water once the temperatures start rising, they are often found suspending in these deeper waters at various depths, there is usually no set pattern to this movement which makes them harder to locate and catch. So what do we do, how do we catch these crappie?

One method killer method for catching crappie in a situation like this is trolling. Trolling small crank baits will allow you to cover allot of water, at different depths. Once your on the crappie and have an idea at what depths they are suspended you can then switch up your presentation, with some vertical jigging, or continue trolling. Though this is going to be a tough task to pull off if you don’t have a boat, which I fully understand many of you out there do not have, so I have another solution for your mid summer crappie blues.

Fishing live bait at night is killer on hot weather crappies. During the night crappie will start moving around again, many times the move into shallower waters to feed. Making them easy targets for the shore fisherman. A simple float rig tipped with a live shiner or crawler will work well. The key here is presenting your bait at the right depth, so there is no doubt you will have to make adjustments to your leader length until you find the optimum suspended depth.

Take some of the simple advice given in this article and use it. You will find that the dog days of summer don’t have to be a down time for crappie fishing.