Special crappie season set to end

Published 6:44 pm Thursday, February 20, 2025

The annual, special crappie “season” at Lake Fork and Lake O’ the Pines is coming to an end.

The season begins on Dec. 1 each year and runs through the last day of February. The special restrictions do not end until next Thursday (Feb. 28), but this will be the final weekend.

The weather forecast is calling for rain chances on Saturday with Sunday being partly cloudy. Mid 30’s for the lows and highs 50-60. At the time of writing this was the latest but we live in East Texas and weather forecasting is not technically possible for our area except during July and August.

The thing to remember is this “If you work Monday through Friday, forget the weather and get to one of these lakes this weekend.”

Reports on both lakes have been steady and typically the colder weather won’t negatively effect the crappie. I did hear about an awesome bridge bite before the cold front on Fork.

There is nearly always bait and crappie around the columns on the major bridges of Fork. Electronics are not necessary but finding the depth the fish and bait are in is much easier with a graph or a flasher for that matter. The forward facing sonar has made finding crappie much easier than traditional sonar but the FFS does not make the crappie bite.

With a good down scan the bridge columns and especially the cross-members between the columns will show the bait and fish’s position. The bait we are talking about are shad and if there are shad present, crappie will be nearby. Lake O’ the Pines has been producing good limits on the main lake side of the Alley, Hurricane and Johnson Creek bridges.

Here also a little idling with the graph will usually turn up the “clouds” of shad the crappie are hunting.

The dilemma of what bait to use is easy to settle. Jigs, hand tied, soft plastic or otherwise plus minnows. Bring them all and use what the fish are biting best. I love using jigs because they much easier to keep “alive” than minnows but I will use minnows if they are working better.

I have actually tipped jigs with a live minnow with good success. Another quick word about FFS, I have watched more than a few crappie rotate 180 degrees away from my jig/minnow combo. They see it but they act insulted or disgusted by the effort. The point here is, fish will bite when they want to and not before.

Dress for the weather with quality rain gear and bring extra clothing in case of drenching. Good luck and get your free filets until next year.