when to start fishing for

[jstfish48162]

crappie! is it to early to fish for them as soon as you can launch a boat after ice-out? or should i wait until "the bite" is on? thanks :confused: :help:

[Connor4501]

Depends on what you are after, if after perch, crappies and gills, almost any marina between Newport north to Ecorse can produce some of the best catches of the year...If walleyes, the Trenton Channel produces quite a few of its 10+ pounders right after iceout...Some Lake Erie hogs show up and spawn in Brest Bay or La Plaisance Bay and spawn on the flats. Most of the spawners shoot up the Detroit River with a heck of a run up the Huron and Raisin Rivers virtually untouched because of the closed season between March 15 and the last Sat. in April...Just watch the ice floes... ;)

[fish eater]

You can start to fish the shallows for em immediately after ice out. If your real antsy (like me) you can even fish the canals for em when there's still a little ice left bobbing around in the canals. During the last couple days of ice, some females will start to move into the shallows. The amount of sunshine plays a big part in how many, and how quickly they'll move in. Several days in a row of sunshine in the last week of March helps alot. Those first fish will be the biggest Crappies, a week or two after them the smaller females move in, and then the males come in. It'll be the middle (weather dictates of course) of April by then. At this point, those really big females get harder to catch. They get harder to find, they feed very little, and they start to get real skittish. You can still pull alot of nice "eaters" though. But your best chance for the big slab crappie, are those pre-spawn females during the last couple days of March, first couple days of April. Again, weather dictates. The farther north you get in the state, that timeline is gonna be pushed back. And vice versa the farther south you go. I just use that timeline for LSC. LSC is the only lake I fish for cal's, and every year in my logbook that's about the time when those pre-spawners started poppin. Some years are a little different, early warm spring, cooler late spring. You never know with Michigan weather.:) Good luck!

[walleyechaser]

If you fish inland lakes with good crappie populations, you can get
them as soon as the ice goes out.
If the lake has canals, fish the northernmost canals first as those
receive the most sun and warm quicker. It only takes a few degrees
difference from the main lake water for the crappies and gills to swarm
into these canals.
If the lake has no canals, look for marshy shorelines and within a
couple of days after ice out, the crappies and gills will follow
minnows to the edge of the marsh for warmth and food. I've caught
crappies and gills in water so shallow that their dorsal fins were
sticking out of the water a week after ice out.
I start fishing them as soon as I can get a boat in the water and
sometimes before if I have shoreline access on a good canal.