Cold Weather Treat - Crappie Fishin'
by Dennis Udlinek
Around the first of each year I fondly remember my partner, Bill and I, whistling down Brownlee Reservoir on a brisk January morning when I was startled out of my cozy wrap. I sat in the portside seat with my head down behind the console trying to keep warm when I heard a suspicious sound skimming underneath the boat. It was the sort of sound that once you've heard it, you never forget it. I immediately sat up hollering "woe"! just as Bill throttled back his big Black Max. He also immediately noticed something was wrong with our cold but otherwise serene trek down the lake.
What we had encountered on the seemingly placid surface of the tranquil reservoir was a sheet of ice! It was enough to put a chill running through my already shivering bones, but as it turned out, there was only a thin layer of ice partially covering a small surface of the lake. We were luckily able to cautiously continue around it and down the reservoir to an old favorite fishing spot. Within an hour the ice had all melted as we had settled in for some cold weather crappie fishin'.
After spending some time searching the depths for telltale signs of life, what we finally found beneath the boat using our fish locator, was a large school of crappie and a day of glorious fishin' was underway. It was only a matter of casts before we hooked our first fish. Before early afternoon passed, we caught 65 respectable crappie, with some fish up to 11 and 12 inches in length. Some folks watching from the bank were not that impressed, mostly because they were unable to cast out to the deep water crappie lair. 
We eventually found two schools suspended over an old creek channel in about 40 feet of water . The schools were spread anywhere from 15 to 35 feet in depth and spanned some 20 to 30 yards wide. These tasty little morsels were quite hungry themselves and were definitely on the feed even though they were ice cold to the touch.
The key to cold weather crappie fishing turned out to be location, location, location! The fish school up in mass for the winter, and if you can find their lair and stick with their movements, you can usually get them to bite. One trick is to tie a bobber to a long leader that's attached to a crappie you just caught. Release the fish over the school and just keep following the bobber. It will take you were ever the school goes! It's amazing how far crappie schools move in the winter.
We fished with 2 and 4 pound test line, 1/32 ounce jigs tipped with brown pepper or white pepper curly tailed grubs. We did not use a bobber and usually had at least twenty feet of line out before we got a strike. It's slow going with such light tackle but the rewards came in plenty of time to make the house before dark giving us time to clean and prepare the fish for supper. What a great cold weather treat!