“They’re holding 27ft down, announced Crappie Guide, Roy Sanford, so drop your rigs to the bottom and jig up about 3ft and they should hit on the drop. Three of us immediately dropped our rigs and three of us immediately hooked-up. ….The crappie were biting!
A mid-morning invitation to tag along to inspect some brush-tops found me enjoying a day of crappie fishing with avid crappie anglers, Roy Sanford of ‘ Sam Rayburn‘s Best’ professional guide services, and MR. Nelson Burton, Chairman for the LSRPA (Lake Sam Rayburn Pavilion Assn;). It would become one of those memorable days of fishing.
“I have one hundred and thirty four brush-tops in Rayburn, stated Roy Sanford, and I like to check most of them out on my off-days to keep a mental note as to the type of fishing action they are attracting. A fishing guide on ‘Big Sam’ for over 25 years, Roy knows his crappie fishing business, but also spends time with his ‘other love’ black bass fishing.
“It takes about four or more hours to set a brush-pile, Roy informed, and the main thing is to target your depth to around 25 to 28 foot when the lake is at normal pool, he advised. And dropping them right off of the points, inside creek bends, or old road beds. With the old road-beds being the best. Just follow out an old road from the bank to about 25ft and set your brush-pile there, and the same goes for the points and creek bends.”
It’s hard to get my voice recorder to take tape the information needed to write this article, mainly due to the fact that about every few seconds one, or all three of us were catching crappie and boxing the keepers. KEEPERS in this case were above the normal TP&W 10 inch minimum to the 14 inch preferred by Roy. So we were actually fishing for 14 inch and above crappie that most anglers refer to as slabs. But as Roy Sanford points out, they aren’t slabs until they’re over two pounds and he’s caught his share of them.
“According to how you set the brush-tops is what species of fish you’ll be attracting to them. For instance, Roy points out, if you lay them down you’ll mostly draw bass, but if you set them erect by using empty plastic jugs on top and cinder blocks for weight on the bottom you’ll draw the interest of crappie. Crappie like to migrate up and down the water column so a vertical top is the best for them. Plus it’s a lot easier to catch crappie on the vertical tops as you don’t snag up as much. Even though we’re catching some really nice crappie today I’m expecting much larger crappie on my brush-tops very soon as they finish up their spawning and start moving from the grass-beds to the brush-tops, where they’ll chase off the smaller fish and allowing us to start catching the bigger slabs.”
“The ONLY baits I use are 1 inch Stanley Wedge-Tail minnows with 1/32nd oz jig-heads with 2 or 3 -BB weights 10” above the jigs. My rigs are 7ft “Mighty-Lite” Wally Marshall Bass-Pro series crappie rods mounted with #25 or #30 Wally Marshall ‘crappie pro-series’ spinning reels spooled with 6-lb test mono line. These are absolutely the BEST crappie rigs you can put in your hands as they are super sensitive and will give you a supreme advantage over the other crappie fishing rigs.”
We experience this advantage as feeling the often light bite of a crappie on these rigs to be “incredible” and using the soft plastic Stanley Wedge-tail minnows becomes the key for catching crappie on just about every cast. I swear that these plastic minnows are the next best thing to live minnows, in fact, probably better as you don’t have to re-bait after every bite, which can be an advantage when the bite gets HOT!
“The lighter your rig the better the bite, Roy explained, as you want your baits to tumble slowly down the brush-top, giving the crappie a naturally falling lure. Often times they will inhale your bait without you even knowing it, so you’ll have to jerk it lightly every now and then to see if they’ve taken it. (Hence – Jigging) Other times you’ll feel a light “tick” as they hit, or in some cases they’ll hit so hard as to jar your wrist. The trick is to just slowly pull up on your rod to hook them and reel them in. The crappie have paper mouths and it’s easy to pull the hook out if you yank too hard. And one important thing to remember is to ALWAYS NET the big ones as the fall off the hook if you hand-line them over the gunnel. I’ve seen many slab crappie over 2 lbs lost due to excited people trying to hurriedly hand-line them in instead of netting them, which happened to a friend of mine who lost about a four pound crappie. And man, you don’t want to lose such crappie”
We’ve checked several brush-tops by now, with some producing well and others not so well, but this can fool you as the ‘seemingly” unproductive brush-tops could become HOT at different times of the day. So Roy’s fishing technique has him continuously moving from top to top, checking to see which tops are active and which are not.
“I don’t over-fish my tops, Roy enlightens, like some anglers do. I’ll fish them until I think it’s time to leave, and then move to another brush-top to give it a chance to re-populate. In this way my tops will always be holding fish and never become fishless. And with 134 tops already holding crappie, my customers will always be assured of having a great fishing trip and will go home with a nice mess of crappie for that family fish-fry.”
“The importance of GPS, Sonar, and Marker Buoys are absolutely critical when doing this type of fishing, Roy stressed, as you first must GPS (global positioning satellite) to pinpoint your brush-top for trying to locate it later, then sonar it with your depth recorder to correctly position your boat, then toss out the marker buoy to know where you’ll be casting to. It’s imperative that you understand and know how to use these tools if you want to be successful at fishing for crappie on the brush-tops.”
“Between now through June, Roy finalized, I’m expecting the bulk of the crappie to move from the grass to the brush-tops where they’ll start holding around 8 to 10ft, and THAT is when the crappie fishing will become absolutely MAGICAL where they can be caught on just about every cast and this is when it becomes fun for the entire family!”
I just can’t imagine the crappie action getting any better than what we had experienced today. We had been fishing the mid-morning hours under bright sunny skies and with light southeast breezes that produced such a fantastic day for us, and with Roy Sanford at the helm we managed to load up our cooler with some exceptional crappie in just a very short time. A most magical day of fishing Roy’s most magical brush-tops.
For more info; on how you can learn the Art of crappie fishing over Roy Sanford’s Magical brush-tops; call -409-698-8385 or cell -409-656-5525.
Roy Sanford is sponsored by Bass Pro Shops and Stanley Lures.
This Ed Snyder/Outdoors report is sponsored by; Fishing World.com- The Stump Restaurant & Club- LSRPA- Roy Sanford Professional Guide Service.By: Ed Snyder / Ed Snyder Outdoors
