Published: February 26, 2009 06:56 am      

Lake Houston's crappie worth trying

Lake Houston is located a stone’s throw away from the big city, offering nearly 12,000 acres of fair to good crappie fishing. The lake is notorious among locals for poor water clarity and for being a haven for skiers and jet ski enthusiasts however, the crappie fishing can be strong. And it is about as far as Rayburn or Toledo Bend for most local anglers.

“There is some pretty good fishing around the 1960 bridge, but its best recommended you do it during the week. On the weekends there is tons of boat traffic around that area,” said Jason Crouch of Cut-N-Shoot.

Crouch said in late/winter early spring the boat traffic is fairly light and the crappie come on live shiners fished around bridge pilings and over planted brush.

“The most important thing to keep in mind here is the fish are super concentrated. You might fish an area that looks very promising and not even see a fish on the graph and then all of a sudden you come across the mother lode. I think that’s part of the reason why this lake gets a bad rap. The fish stay pretty concentrated,” Crouch said.

The exception to the rule is later in the spring when the fish will move into the creeks on the north end of the lake near the mouth of the San Jacinto River. These fish will feed aggressively and feed almost like bass.

“When that happens you start to see some fish move up into the creeks on the north end is the fish scatter out a lot more. Your best bet is to fish a black/white Roadrunner or a black/yellow Beetle Spin. Slow roll those baits parallel to the brush and grass along the shorelines where you see fish popping early in the morning. Those are killer crappie lures here and fishing them is a lot of fun,” Crouch said.

For anglers a little more adventuresome, the Trinity River north of Lake Livingston holds good numbers of crappie this time of year through the spring.

A good way to fish these spots is to use a depth finder to locate those that have big schools of shad around them. Crappie do not hang around spots that are devoid of baitfish very long and generally speaking, the bigger the bunch of bait, the more crappie will be around. They are gregarious fish anyway and like to bunch up really tight, so a difference of two or three feet in depth is a big one.

One of the reasons some anglers have such a hard time locating crappie on big rivers is that many of these fish will suspend at say 8 feet in 12 feet of water just over a subtle drop-off. When fishing jigs or shiners rigged on weights, many anglers shoot right past these fish whereas a tiny, diving crank bait like some of the ones put out by Yozuri will go right to them and suspend where you need to get the attention of the fish.

If you are fishing natural brush piles or logjams in a river, the most common and arguably the most productive bait is a live shiner fished on a free line. Well, it is almost a free line rig. Instead of a simple hook and shiner, the preferred rig is a hook and shiner finished off with a 1/32-ounce weight which will allow the bait to get down a little quicker and into the lair of some of the bigger fish, which typically hold tight to the structure.

The big crappie did not get that way by being easy pickings, so you will want to focus your efforts in a focused fashion to get the big slabs. If you catch a couple of big ones on shiners but are being hammered by smaller fish, consider switching over to little tube jigs.

Tube jigs are popular in a couple of areas of Texas and in other states but are just now catching on statewide. The small two-inch tube jigs in lowered down over brush in the river is a great way to entice the big crappie to bite. Crappie are just like any other fish in that bigger bait can sometimes equal bigger fish.

Don’t be shy about reserving some extra large shiners for the big ones or upgrading to a three-inch jig to get the big ones out of their lair.