Lake Of The Ozarks Winter Crappie Fishing

  Winter time Crappie fishing at Lake of the Ozarks can be phenomenal, some of the best crappie fishing in the mid west. Lake of the Ozarks is home to over thousand miles of bank lines loaded with docks and cover making it an amazing crappie fishery. 

When the water temp gets into the 40s the crappie tend to school up deeper on main lake areas. The main lake areas I tend to look for are close or along the sides of a channel bank. Channel banks are the deepest side of the lake, for example a big steep bluff or big chunk rock bank on the main lake generally has a channel along it. Channels banks act as highways for crappies to move from their shallow spring spawning areas to there deep summer and winter spots. Steep channel bluffs, bluff ends and long points can hold a lot of suspended crappie all winter long. Deep main lake commercial docks can be great this time of the year, especially if they’re suspended brush piles on them. Personal and commercial docks are all anchored to the bottom using big cable bails which is another form of structure crappie like to suspend on. Using my electronics I side scan parallel to the dock giving me an image of what is to the left and right of me. Using electronics can be very beneficial so you know what’s structure is under all the docks and where the fish are in the water column.

Now that I have located some structure that is holding a school of crappie how do I get them to bite? Well there are few techniques that work really well in cold water for me which is dead sticking the bait, meaning just letting it sit still in the water column where you have located the school. Let's say the school I found ranges between 8 feet under the surface all the way to 15 feet deep. I would start off dead sticking in 8 feet then slowly move the bait down through the school after letting it sit in each water column, until you find the active fish. A few of my favorite cold water baits to dead stick are Crappie magnets, bobby garland baby shads and a live minnow.  Recently I have been catching crappies around 8-10  feet under the surface suspended above brush piles hanging in 20 feet of water. The size jig heads I rig for dead sticking range between  1/16 and 1/8th and 1/4 oz depending on how deep your fishing.  Trial and error will teach you a lot about where and what the crappie are honed in on. All because one school will not bite does not mean the rest won't. I Tend to Fish Multiple spots until you find the active school of crappie im looking for. The crappie tend to bite the best on the cold windy days so bundle up and let's go fishing!