Fishing is a very famous sport throughout. Experience the delight of catching your dinner and enjoying nature at the same time. Don’t miss the fun while fishing with family or friends, and it’s also a great time for a dad-and-son bonding. But fishing isn’t only all about fun, thrill comes along with it too. Obstacles are unpreventable whenever you are fishing; may it be river fishing or sea fishing. And it is very important to be patient and know from any mistakes you commit. No one becomes a professional overnight, it demands a lot of practice – and practice makes it perfect.

Fishing license is required by the law before you can fish, but it depends from state to state. So before you embark into fishing, be sure to check out your state’s requirements. You can look in to fishing websites for more information and you can also buy fishing license online for your convenience. Getting a fishing license is pretty fast and simple when you do it online. You don’t want to get legal issues while enjoying your day fishing, it will totally ruin your day!

When all the requirements are complete, you can now think of buying your first fishing reel.

Before you decide to buy a reel, you should set your budget and you should know where you want to fish – would it be on a stream or a river or to an open sea. A different environment needs a different tool. You should also know your fishing experience and skills. A starting angler should consider something basic to practice with before trying on to something set for the experienced anglers. Trying different types of fishing reels will help you determine which fishing reel is best for you.

There are different types of fishing reel available on the market these days. You can find them ranging from different prices that can suit your budget needs. If you can afford the expensive ones, you get to have more reels to choose from, but expensive ones are not necessarily the best for you. You can also choose to shop for fishing gear online or to stores that sell second-hand fishing gears at a very cheap price.

When everything’s ready, you can now venture into the exciting world of fishing. Fishing is really fun and rewarding, and having a good equipment to bring along only makes it better!

The key to preparing your own crappie structure is keeping the location a secret. You can sink various structures such as plastics like PVC and brush. Willow tree branches are the easiest brush to sink, while preparing an area where crappies will swarm too all month long. You need long cuttings of about 3 feet in length, while using seven to ten branches with many smaller branches. Use cement blocks to sink any type of artificial structures and branch cuttings. You need something heavy enough to sink your cover directly below where you place it in the water. Having a good anchor keeps the brush from shifting in the water. Use a cement block and a rope of about two feet; tie it to the main branch to sink. Crappies, much like bass enjoy sitting in covers and waiting for food.

Prepare your crappie hole in the fall and in early spring while there is no ice. Prepare crappie cover at three depths for the best results and then mark your locations in shallow, mid-depths and in deep water. You want an area that is not easy to fish. Sink your brush while no one else is watching you. If your cover area is over-fished, the crappie will haul tail and leave for other areas. Search for areas that may not be attractive to casual boating. This is the reason for preparing three locations for different fishing seasons. You should find an area where the bottom is deep and then grows gradually shallower for preparing your three locations in a line up. Mark each of your locations using a GPS point, so you can come back repeatedly and not waste any of your good fishing time. You can get small children interested in fishing by having them along as you prepare your covers. Children may grow impatient, however when visiting a busy honey hole with a lot of biting action, they will learn to love the sport like a pro.

Regardless of the area, this method works well, since crappies enjoy collecting around structures and brush when it is part of their habitat. Before you begin, you should check with the local authorities to find out if you can legally sink such structures for fishing.

After preparing your honey holes, they may produce a good catch for you at least ninety-five percent of the time, which is impressive while taking others out fishing.

Black crappie is white or grayish-white in color, with dark gray or black spots which cover their sides. White crappies are named for their lighter colors and have distinctive vertical bars which run down their sides.

The spots and bars on crappie are darker or lighter depending on the kind of water the fish live in and the time of year. In the spring when the fish spawn, male crappies are darker; most of its body may be jet black at this time of year. You can also distinguish the two species by their dorsal spines; white crappie will have 5 or 6 spines, black crappie 7 or 8.

Their appearance may be slightly different, but the two species have much else in common. All crappie have arrays of gill rakers used to strain plankton (a staple of their diet) from water. Crappie will eat nearly anything they can: insects, minnows, crustaceans, small fish and sometimes even prey their own size including threadfin and gizzard shad. Crappies have very healthy appetites, but do most of their feeding from dusk to dawn. They prefer to stay out of the sun and feed less frequently when water temperatures sink below 50 degrees.

While they’re active year round, the spring and fall are the best times to catch crappie. Spring offers a particularly easy catch. Crappie will tend to stay away from shallow waters in the winter months, but once the water starts approaching 50 degrees they’ll start to come out of hiding, hanging around the mouths of creek channels. Once things warm up a little further, they make their way to shallow bays and secondary creeks via creek channels.

This is the time of year I like to get out there and either troll minnows or cast a Road Runner baited with a grub out to stumps and pockets of brush, retrieving the line very slowly. By this time of year you’ll find the males in shallow water scoping out spawning beds while the females hang back in the closest deep water. As it gets closer to spawning season, crappie will be more aggressive feeders and you’ll see baitfish becoming more active. To catch males, try a minnow under a cork in likely spawning beds. For females, you can use a cast into the deeper waters with a slow retrieval to lure them out.

Water surface temperatures from 62-65 degrees are when crappie will begin spawning in earnest. You’ll find black crappie spawning in shallow waters, while white crappies prefer deeper areas, with depths of 10’ or more. The females will move in to the spawning beds only once the time is right. They stay only long enough to deposit their eggs. The males stay behind to guard the nest while the females head back to deeper water to rest. Three to five days and the eggs should be hatched. You’ll do pretty well right now with a live minnow under a cork.

The males stay to protect the nest until their fry are about ½” long before heading out. Once the water gets to around 70 degrees, you can use minnows or a Roadrunner or other jig. Cast and retrieve very, very slowly. When the water is reaching 75 degrees, the males will head back out through the creek channels and rejoin the females in deeper, cooler waters for the summer.

The toughest times for crappie anglers are summer and winter. Crappie head for deep waters after spawning, coming to the shallows to feed only at dawn and dusk; there are exceptions and I know I can’t be the only angler to catch a crappie in shallow water even in the middle of summer. You will sometimes find them in shady areas including under docks, bridges and weed beds which are located near deeper waters.

The fall is a better time for anglers. When the water starts to cool, crappie begin fattening themselves for winter. You’ll find crappie staging not too far from their pre-spawn hangouts and you can do well just casting jigs in the autumn.  Personally, I use the same jigs as I do in the spring pre-spawning season.

The good times end soon though. Once water temperatures sink down to the mid-40s, crappie head back to the deeper waters of a lake.

Please note that the water temperatures and times of year will correspond to each other differently depending where you’re located. Water temperatures may reach spawning temperatures as early as late January if you happen to be in Mississippi, but you’ll have to wait until May or June if you’re in Minnesota.

The number one rule with crappie is this: Crappie love cover.
You’ll find them in brush piles, around stumps, rock piles, fallen trees and any and every other submerged or semi-submerged cover.

Vertical jigging is the way to go with these structures – a wax worm-tipped 1/16 or 1/32 oz jig twitched in a brush pile is going to get their attention. A minnow on a Tru-Turn BloodRed hook with a bobber will do the trick nicely as well. Once you’ve found what depth they’re hiding out, work it!  Keep fishing at that depth until you’ve caught all you want or you stop bringing them in.