hey dan,i have a quick question for u..i live ina place called clearlake california..(perhaps uve heard of it be4)anyways all our regular crappie haunts are all empty..the crappie have just picked up and left..we cant even mark em on a graph either…oh ya btw the lake is also like 5 feet below normal too..should i just look for them in unconventional places?thanks..walter souza

Low water can be a good thing. You can see structure that would otherwise be underwater. You’ll find hot spots that you couldn’t see before. Make sure you note the locations when you find them so you can re-locate them when the water goes back up. Remember, crappie are very structure oriented for much of the year. But when the water temperature is in the 70s and up, sometimes they will get moody and sulk by suspending in open water, although they will usually still be orienting above structure. As a rule, they will be somewhere near the thermocline. When the water level is low, the thermocline changes, so the crappie may not be where you would normally expect them to be. Start looking along river channels and look for structure at about the same depth as the thermocline. Start at the deepest places in the lake and work up. Don’t ignore cove mouths, inlets, outlets and along rip-raps. In this situation, slow trolling with a spider rig is the way to go. Rig 3 or more rods (where legal) with chartreuse, yellow and white marabou jigs at different depths, place them in the rod holders and troll likely spots, using the depth-finder as a guide. When you hook up with crappie, mark the spot. Low water can concentrate crappie in the deeper holes in a lake. Get a lake contour map and search out the deep spots. Tight-lining with a meat-getter rig is a good way to search out these areas. Again, when you catch crappie, mark the spot for later reference.