Dan, What are the best summer time crappie fishing tactics to use.

When fishing for Crappie during the hot summer months you need to make two main adjustments to your fishing techniques. Crappie are much like many other game fish in this regard. Patterns that work well in the spring and fall will not be successful in June, July and August when the water temperature is at its highest. First you will need to move deeper. Crappie that inhabit areas of water that are four to six foot deep in summer are now in sections of the lake that are ten to twenty foot deep. Understand however they still relate to the same forms of cover as they do in springtime. In some ways this makes catching them a bit easier. Crappie are a fish that goes with trees like peanut butter goes with jelly. There are precious few spots in deep water that meet this requirement. Surely a depth finder comes in handy. If you can find deeper water areas that have sunken trees you have a bonanza. In the absence of sunken trees look for another form of cover other than weeds. Your second adjustment needs to be in terms of size. In spring I like to use small jig heads and small minnows when live bait fishing. In the summer you need to scale up larger. I normally use jigs in summer that are twice the size I use in spring. I also use small bass minnows rather than the tiny crappie minnows. Remember these Crappie have had several more months to grow and are larger on average then they were in spring.