Throughout spring and sometimes well into summer, North Carolina crappie angler Jeff Lowdermilk primarily targets roaming fish that are in pre-spawn and post-spawn mode. Because different groups of crappie spawn at different times in any given lake and they use the same areas before and after the spawn, these areas tend to hold fish throughout spring.

Like many dedicated crappie anglers, Lowdermilk has overhauled his approach in recent years because of technology. I fished with him a few years back, and he was a dedicated and highly skilled long-line troller. He used multiple lines to fish a range of depths with a variety of colors and to locate, catch and pattern fish. I joined him again last week, and he has switched completely to searching out roaming fish with live sonar and casting to specific fish – for tournament fishing and practice, at least.

Lowdermilk still does a bit of relaxing trolling for “fun fishing.” However, when he’s fishing this time of year – whether on his home waters of Lake James in Western North Carolina or another lake – it’s usually in a tournament or is a scouting outing for some upcoming event. With either technique, he targets crappie in the same stages, so his many years of trolling make him more efficient in finding the right areas to fish and making the best presentations.

For the same reason, understanding the locations and behavior of these fish is beneficial whether you are casting to specific fish with live sonar, trolling with multiple crappie jigs or blind casting an area where you’ve marked probable crappie using traditional sonar.

Roamer Locations

The fish Lowdermilk targets are not necessarily the individual roamers you sometime hear about (although those are among them and sometimes are the largest fish). Often a few fish or even a school will be together. What makes them roamers is that they are suspended and are not holding tight to timber, brush or other cover. They may or may not be relating to shad schools or structure.

The key defining aspect of Lowdermilk’s spring areas is that they are just out from likely spawning areas, whether that means farther down a flat, just off a point or over a creek channel. The fish will be mostly suspended and not holding tight to structure, but they sometimes still hold over channel edges and other features.

On Lake James and other waters Lowdermilk fishes regularly, he knows the areas fish use and can simply pick areas to search based on wind direction, reports or his own recent success. On less familiar waters he focuses on coves, pockets and the upper ends of creek arms and looks for shallow areas with hard bottoms and plentiful cover that provides quality spawning habitat. He then uses his electronics and begins searching a variety of depths in those areas, looking for suspended crappie.

An important aspect of location is the depth range of suspended crappie. Unlike fish that are relating to forage at a specific depth or to bottom structure, suspending crappie often will be at a wide range of depths. During my recent trip with Lowdermilk, most fish were between 5 and 15 feet beneath the surface, but they were pretty evenly distributed through that range, and we caught some from barely beneath the surface to around 20 feet. Bottom depths where we saw the most fish ranged from 15 to 35 feet.

Baits & Presentations

Lowdermilk’s go-to bait for casting to crappie he is watching on live sonar is a Bobby Garland Baby Shad. Jighead size varies with water clarity and fish depth, but a 1/32-ounce is his primary size for Lake James. When the fish seem extra fussy, he switches to a Bobby Garland Itty Bit Mayfly fished on a 1/32- or 1/64-ounce Overbite Sickle Jighead.

Lowdermilk has long known that color makes a significant difference some days and that productive colors can vary daily. However, watching fish and their responses has made him extra aware of the color game’s importance and allows him to pattern more efficiently. He keeps a wide variety of colors of his favorite baits handy and is quick to cycle through options, always watching the fish’s responses. He starts with what seems to fit the situation but listens to what the crappie tell him.

Lowdermilk casts slightly past the fish he is targeting, lets the bait fall with his bail open, flips the bail as the bait gets close to feather it down slowly and with control, and stops it above the fish. He generally wants the bait close to the fish’s level but not quite to it and never below it. He watches the fish for any hint of turning or rising. As soon as the fish starts moving, he begins to reel, so the meal appears to be getting away, and this tends to trigger the strike.

Like color selection, presentation nuances are part of the patterning game. Exactly how far to let the bait sink, whether to add light rod movement and how quickly to move the bait away all make a difference in the number of strikes triggered, and the ideal answers vary daily and can even change during a day.

Tips for Targeting Roamers

Note Fish Size – Crappie commonly group up by size, so if Lowdermilk isn’t catching the size he seeks, he moves. That might just mean crossing the cove, or it might mean searching a totally different area. Similarly, once he catches a couple of “the right fish” from an area in practice, he notes it and leaves those fish alone till tournament time.
Stay Above The Fish – With their high eye positioning, crappie feed upward most of the time. If a bait drops beneath a fish, it’s out of the strike zone, and often when a bait passes close to crappie and sinks below it, that fish gets spooked and loses interest.
Less is More – Veterans have known this for decades, but live sonar has really proven that crappie don’t like a bait that moves up and down too much. Hard rod snaps are far more likely to spook fish than prompt strikes.
Don’t Beg Them – If you’ve gotten a fish to move a time or two and it fails to respond at all for the next couple of casts, move along. That fish is unlikely to bite, and you’re much better off finding a new target.
Consider Wind – Reasonable wind doesn’t necessarily impact the crappie’s feeding behavior, but anything more than a breeze impacts boat positioning and bait presentations. If possible, identify multiple potentially productive areas that are oriented in different ways, so you have options for evading wind impact.

For more on crappie lures, visit https://bobby-garland.com.