Catching Crappie Over a Green Light
Keith Lusher 06.13.24
There’s no arguing that underwater green lights attract fish. I’ve used them numerous times to catch speckled trout, white trout, bass, bream, and crappie in overnight conditions. This past week, I had the chance to fish over a green light in a private lake just outside Union Springs, Alabama. The lake measures 32 acres and is teeming with largemouth bass and crappie. Since the owners are trying to build it into a trophy bass lake, we were instructed to “keep all the crappie you want.” So a few friends and I went to work.
As the sun set over the horizon, the activity began. The green light that we were fishing over was located at the end of a 30-foot dock in about 12 feet of water. As we were tying on our jigs, we noticed a school of threadfin shad starting to circle in the middle of the green light. Around the school, on the outside of the light, there were a few large crappie swimming in a circle. They were staying in the dark water so the shad could not spot them.
We started dropping down our Bobby Garland Jigs rigged on 1/16 oz. Flashing Assassin jig heads but couldn’t muster a bite. We were dropping the jigs down into the center of the green light where the shad were circling, but for some reason, the crappie weren’t entering the light. Then we made an adjustment. I moved the location of the jig to the dark water and BAM! A crappie slammed my jig, and I landed the first slab of the night. It was a 15-inch crappie.
Then my friend Collier Thornton moved his line into the darkness, and that’s when the action started. “I believe those fish are more comfortable in the dark water, so when we moved our lures over a few feet, that made all the difference,” Thornton said. We fished the outskirts of the green lights until midnight and ended the night with over 30 crappie averaging between 12-15 inches each. We filled an ice chest full of fish, but more importantly, we learned how to fish over a green light the proper way to catch crappie.
