Day 3: How to Fish Creeks for Crappie in the Wintertime with Kennieth Pierce

Editor’s Note: Thirty-five year-old Kennieth Pierce of Quinlan, Texas, fishes Lake Arlington in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex as his home lake. Pearce’s daddy started him crappie fishing when he was 5-years old.

During the winter months, I like to fish the only creek coming into Lake Arlington. The crappie usually will be there from November until the end of January. During that time of the year, I’m looking for the deepest holes in the creek channel, which is only about 6-8 feet deep. I’m searching for holes that are 10-12 feet deep. When the weather is really cold, I’ll target the crappie holding in the deep holes.

Sometimes, I’ll fish the creek from the bank casting a slip cork and jig. I use a 7’6” ACC Crappie Stix casting rod. I’ll have a slip cork up the line and a jig tied on the bottom of the line. I’ll cast my jig out to the hole and twitch the cork and jig back to the bank, until I locate exactly where the fish are holding. Before I had a boat, I learned from my dad and uncles where the deep holes were in the creek. I guess that’s my heritage. The numbers of years I’ve fished from the bank with my dad and uncles causes me to want to fish from the bank, when I fish the creek during the winter months. The bank fishing is open to everyone. But as long as you don’t tell other anglers where you’re fishing the bank, and when the crappie are in the creek, you generally won’t have company fishing close to you. The wintertime crappie in the creek will be 10-13 inches long. You can’t keep a crappie less than 10 inches. I’ll often catch 20 or 30 wintertime crappie and have 10 keepers in that number of fish.

Every now and then you’ll catch a school of sand bass (white bass) coming through the creek, but the main fish we catch out of the holes are crappie and catfish. The cats we catch are mostly channel cats, but I did catch a 22-pound flathead cat fishing from my boat. I have a video of the catch on my YouTube channel – hookcitytv

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdcuACQzEadZ-ihtqH28uOQ).

To see how and where Kenneth Pearce fishes, go to his YouTube channel at hookcitytv

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdcuACQzEadZ-ihtqH28uOQ) and watch some of his videos. Most of his videos are crappie fishing, but he has several videos on bluegill fishing too.