“Fall Fishing with Shane Anderson and Brad Whitehead and the Mister Mino at Pickwick, Bear Creek and Wilson Lakes”

Part 2: How to Catch Crappie with Brad Whitehead

Editor’s Note: Brad Whitehead of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, guides on Pickwick, Wilson and the Bear Creek Lakes on the Tennessee River.

Question: Brad, where do you find crappie in the fall in the Deep South?

Whitehead: We begin trolling in 16-foot-deep water in the mornings. By the middle of the day, we’re usually fishing in 24 feet of water.

Question: How do you get your bait down to crappie that deep?

Whitehead: I either troll crankbaits like the BigySmal Meatloaf Shad from the back of the boat or fish a spider rig.

Question: How do you get your crankbaits down to deep-water depths?

Whitehead: I’ll put a 1/2- or a 1-ounce egg-shaped leader up the line about 4 feet from my crankbait. I’ll loop my line through the egg sinker three times to have about 4 feet of line coming away from the sinker. Then, I’ll tie my crankbait to the sinker. When I’m fishing without a weight, early in the mornings, I’ll pull the crankbait with a 6-1/2-foot Buck’s Graphite Crappie Spinning Rod. Or, I’ll use a 5-ounce weight up the line with two Mister Mino jigheads tied below the weight on the 7-1/2-foot B’n’M Graphite All-Purpose Crappie Wizard rod.

Question: Brad, what kinds of areas do you troll over?

Whitehead: I’ll often change the spots I troll over every day. To catch crappie using this method, I have to cover a lot of water. I’ll troll flats to the edges of creek channels. At this time of year, I’ll start in the mouths of creeks and troll about halfway to the backs of the creeks. The creeks I’m trolling are big creeks that bring major amounts of water into the lake. In the mornings, while the light is still low, I’ll troll the flat in 14 to 16 feet of water. I’ll troll as shallow as 12 feet, if the water’s cloudy. From 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, I’ll move out to the main creek channel where I’ll drop my lines all the way to the bottom, reel up two or three cranks on the reel from the bottom and then begin trolling.

When I’m trolling the creek channel, I’ll have my crankbait running at 12-to 14-feet deep with my downriggers on the line just off the bottom. Some days I’ll catch more crappie on downriggers, and on other days, I’ll catch more crappie on crankbaits. I’ll keep both downriggers and crankbaits on the flats and just off the lips of the breaks. I’ll troll 16 poles – eight poles on the front and eight poles on the back—at a time.

Question: What size crappie do you catch in early September, Brad?

Whitehead: The crappie I’ll catch will be from 10- to 14-inches long. You can catch really-nice-sized crappie at this time of year. Most crappie fishermen don’t fish in hot weather in the deep south like August and early September because they believe crappie don’t bite then. But I’ll often catch bigger crappie in the warm months than in the spring.

Question: Why do you like the Mister Twister Mister Mino at this time of year?

Whitehead: The Mister Mino is a little bigger than regular crappie grubs. The shad the crappie are feeding on now are slightly bigger than most crappie jigs. I’ll fish white or white/chartreuse color combinations.

Question: How many crappie do you usually bring in from a day of trolling?

Whitehead: We generally come in with 25 to 40 crappie in our ice chest from a 1/2-day trip and throw back at least that many. The number of crappie you bring in varies in September. During the last week of August, I caught 40 crappie per day, and the week before that, I brought in 27 crappie per day. My average daily crappie catch is in the 27- to 40-number range, but my numbers depend on how the crappie are biting, and what size crappie my clients want to catch. With 16 B’n’M poles out, I can cover quite a bit of water and find good numbers of fish.

For more information on fishing with Brad Whitehead on Lake Wilson, Pickwick, Wheeler and Bear Creek lakes, call (256) 381-7231 or email bradandalicia09@comcast.net.