This post was last updated on July 16th, 2021 at 11:37 am
Fly Fishing for Crappie!
In this video I go out in a Michigan lake on a kayak and catch some nice crappies with fly fishing gear. Afterwards, I bring them back home and fry them up into some of the most delicious tasting fish I’ve ever had!
Crappie Fly Fishing Tips
It was early spring during this fishing trip, so the water was a little stained. The visibility was about 14 inches, so I had to use a bright flashy fly. Since the water was still very chilly (The ice just left the day before this trip) I assumed the crappie would not want to move too fast, or eat any fly patterns that were too large. I opted for a size 10 cranefly larva pattern (see image left). This pattern worked very well. The next day I went out and added a small #12 Montana stonefly nymph and caught a lot of fish on that as well.
Paper mouths
Crappie are known to have very delicate skin in their mouth’s. This makes them hard to land, because their mouth will easily tear. While fishing these fish, you need to be very gentle. You should also be very careful to lift them out of the water by your hand or a net. You don’t want to lift them up with the fishing line, this will often end with the fish escaping.
Cooking Crappie Fillets
Crappie are easy to clean and taste great. If you want to know the proper procedure for cleaning them, I do a demonstration in the video above. They taste especially good when they are plucked from cold water in the early spring.
I use a combination of Penko Japanese bread crumbs and standard batter. I also add in some pepper, garlic salt and soy sauce to give it tremendous flavor.
For more crappie fly fishing tips check out the video at the top of this page.