Crappie Fishing: A112 How & What Do Crappies Eat? And Info On Crappie Live Baits!

ARTICLE 112 Understanding the crappies feeding habits What Do Crappies Eat?

One of the most important key ingredients to developing a consistent crappie fishing pattern to find and catch crappie begins and ends with the golden question: What are the crappies eating? Determining what the crappie forage is and learning the habits of the crappies food chain means one thing catch crappie!

The crappies which go by peculiar namessuch as calico bass, speckled bass, speckled perch, white perch, pole crappie, strawberry bass, and paper mouth. The crappie has exceptional night vision and their eyes are the biggest of any other game fish when compared to their body size. This fact gives the strawberry bass a distinct advantage over it's crappie food such as zooplankton ,small shad,perch fry,shiners,crappie minnows,fathead minnows anywhere there is low light conditions.This is the main reason that strawberry bass turn on at dawn, and sunset and feed aggressively at night. If you have ever thought of going night fishing for crappie you would make a good choice because the strawberry bass is very active at night.

The white perch is like many other preditors in the sense that they develop a close relationship with their prey. Once the conection is established where you find one you will find the other. Foe example if you notice that there is a new hatch of crappie minnows swimming near some weed growth you can bet there are some white perch close by feeding on them. You can use this connection to your advantage when you are selecting your crappie fishing baits. Determine what the forage is the paper mouth crappie are feeding on at a certain location then select either your crappie artificial baits or crappie live baits to match as closely as possible. The more detail you include here the better your crappie catch will be. For example if the white perch are feeding on crappie minnows than an excellent crappie bait would be a crappie jig tipped with live crappie minnows or a artificial crappie jig and soft plastic that resembles a crappie minnow.

The connection between the prey and the speckled perch normally begins when three conditions occur. The number on condition that triggers the start of the connection is when there is a large population of a certain crappie forage food such as in our example crappie minnows. The number two condition is the prey are vulnerable such as when they are moving in migration or spawning. or example at night where the crappie have a distinct advantage. The number three connection is when a certain forage exsists in locations that the speckled perch are spawning.

I want to thank you for reading my article about Catch Crappie. We wish you the best of luck on your next fishing trip!