The good news, if you don’t have a boat or you simply enjoy easy-access fishing from the shore, is that many of the best spring crappie areas are in easy reach of the bank. In fact, some very productive areas are more easily worked from the shore than from a boat, and some are only reachable by shoreline fishermen.
A good starting point is simply to identify parks, boat ramps, bridge rights-of-way and recreation areas near you that offer shoreline fishing access. Take extra note of bridges. They provide funnels for the fish and outstanding cover with their pilings and the riprap that normally borders both sides, and bank access is often quite good.
Look at these areas on a map and identify the ones that are located along creek arms of reservoirs, toward the backs of bays on natural lakes and on backwaters of rivers. While you can catch spring crappie on main waterways, your best chances are typically out of the river flow or away from the main basin. If time and geography will allow you to try multiple areas, try to identify at least one area toward the lower end or mid-point of a creek arm and another that’s way back in the same creek.
Look at the areas on Google Earth or click on the satellite view on a maps app to see how much open bank access there is, what type of cover is obvious and where any channels run. Some of the best areas are shallow near the edges but have deeper water nearby.
When you get to an area, realize that not all specific spots are created equal, and sometimes the features that set apart one spot from the rest are subtle. It could be where the creek channel swings a bit closer, where a culvert adds warm water from a backwater or where the cover doesn’t quite reach the surface and therefore gets less attention. It might also be the spot that takes a little more walking to reach. You can trust that the closest laydown to parking area gets fished a lot!
Sometimes you can identify what sets apart a hotspot and go straight there. Other times, you find it by working your way along a bank and seeing where the fish bite.
