Mississippi Crappie Fishing Report October 2-9, 2020

“These are the biggest crappie I’ve ever caught!” exclaimed my partner, Ralph Kitson from South Dakota, after a couple days on Lake Enid, Mississippi.  Ralph joined the walleye wisdom fishing team for our now annual crappie fishing trip to the well known lakes of northern Mississippi.  Tracy Hayward, Larry Hamlett, and Mike Woods fished out of Tracy’s Lund while Ralph and I fished out of my Ranger aluminum boat.  We stayed at the State campground at the George P. Cosar park on the south shore of Lake Enid.  Lake Sardis is north of Enid while Grenada is south of Enid.  We had a very productive week catching our fish unlike anyone else we saw fishing:  we pulled cranks while the locals did their “spider rigging” programs.  Tracy was all set up to do the slow moving, meticulous, long rod, technique to catch crappie but decided to stay with cranks after pulling them his first day there.  Ralph and I used six seven foot Shimano Talora rods with the Abu Garcia digital line counter reels, three on each side of the Ranger, with two “shortie” rods off the back using the Church tackle floating cone shaped cylinder to get the baits way behind the boat.  We used our OffShore boards on the longer rods to space out the baits.  We were able to find active fish and work them to catch 17-20+ keepers each day!  The bait of choice was #7 Berkley Flicker Shads in colors that have continued to work for us trolling. Once a crappie grabs the bait, he comes to the surface behind the board and you reel him in!  If you caught a fish which stayed down, it would be a catfish or bass.  The crappie have to be over 12 inches long on all three lakes to keep.  For every keeper, we caught seven or eight shorts most of which were 11 1/2 inches long which bodes well for 2021 fishing!  Our boat caught several 15-16 inch long fish!  Tracy’s boat had several at 16 1/2 inches long!!  Almost all of our keepers were at least 14 inches long which made for some nice pictures back at the fish cleaning station.  Ralph and I did go down to Grenada for part of a day but only caught a couple crappie and one huge catfish.  We went back to Enid and filled our livewell!  I realize the locals have their “spots” where they target the spider rigging.  We were able to troll around them and the nets you’ll find there.  We fished mostly 15-25 foot depths along the old river and creek channels showing up on our Navionics chip in our Lowrance electronics.  Please keep in mind spring fishing is much different with the typical higher water from winter and spring rains. Crappie move shallow and are caught by locals in waders casting to them.  You can still crank ’em but the fall bite seems to be better for us.  Our weather was ideal with highs in the upper 70’s and a couple days in the low 80’s.  Just remember the sun comes down earlier so getting off the water around 5pm to clean fish worked for us.  You’ll notice the late afternoon sun and shadows on many of our fish cleaning pics!  Ralph and I came home a day early so I could get ready to leave for the NWT Championship.  Please read my NWT story to see what happened to me.  Tracy and his pals fished while we drove home on Thursday and wacked ’em catching some of the biggest fish for the week!  They drove home on Friday just ahead of a big weather change because of the hurricane coming on land in Louisiana.  Another October has come and is almost gone.  You might want to consider adding a fall crappie fishing trip to your 2021 schedule or even watching the weather for a week there yet this Covid filled year!  Hope you enjoy the report and the pics from Mississippi!  Spike