Gusty spring winds blowing across the Illinois flatlands surrounding Rend Lake can wreak havoc on crappie anglers. Rend Lake Guide Kyle Schoenherr warns anglers to pay attention to the weather forecast for the wind speed and direction before venturing out (CrappieNOW magazine.)on the water. “The lake can get dangerous especially if you are in a small boat,” Schoenherr says. He suggests if the wind is blowing hard out of the north, you should launch your boat and fish on the northern side of the lake, and vice versa.
Playing the wind game becomes a necessity at Rend if crappie are in the prespawn stage and holding in the open areas at the mouths of bays. Schoenherr slow trolls spider rigs with minnows into the face of the wind to catch the bigger female crappie staging 4 to 5 feet deep along stump flats. He also catches prespawn crappie vertical jigging with 1/16-ounce tube jigs in brush piles and stake beds along points, ledges and creek channels at depths of 5 to 10 feet.
“April is a real tricky month, especially in Southern Illinois with the weather patterns, so sometimes we are fishing for prespawn fish but most of the time we are catching fish up in the buck brush. If the fish are committed up in the bushes then the wind is not too big of a factor because there are so many little nooks that you can go in to get out of the wind.” The bushes are usually located in small bays and cuts that are protected from the wind. Schoenherr notes the biggest challenge he encounters while fishing bushes on a windy day is keeping his line from blowing around when he lowers his jigs through the maze of limbs.
Rend Lake offers plenty of opportunities to bushwhack for crappie. “In the back of every bay there are bushes all around the lake,” says Schoenherr. The local guide notes the southern end of the lake is dotted with more campgrounds and rock riprap banks, so the best banks loaded with bushes are north of State Highway 154.
When he’s probing the bushes, Schoenherr either dips jigs or a bobber-and minnow rig into the shallow cover. He favors a 1/8-ounce 2.0 Roadrunner Head for bushwhacking because it has a small blade and a big barb for holding tube baits. The 1/8-ounce jighead also gives Schoenherr better control of his line since he needs to drop his jig straight down through the openings in the limbs. Schoenherr combines the Roadrunner Head with a smoke glow 3-inch Midsouth Super Jigs tube or a 1.75-inch Midsouth Super Jig tube tipped with a medium-size minnow.
The guide presents his flip cork setup into the middle of the bushes if crappie ignore his jigs. His setup begins with a 2 1/2-inch cigar-shaped float, followed by a string bobber stop–he prefers the string stop instead of rubber stops that tend to hang up too much in the limbs. Below the stop, Schoenherr slides two bullet-shaped 1/8-ounce worm weights on his line with one weight pointed upwards and the other pointed downwards so the combined weight has a more streamlined shape for moving into and out of the limbs easier. Schoenherr adds two Blakemore Medium Target Beads below the weights and completes his rig with a Number 2 Tru-Turn Blood Red Hook.
The bushes are usually in 2 to 3 feet of water in the spring, so Schoenherr catches most of his fish 10 to 18 inches deep. If the lake is high, a majority of the bushes could be 4 to 5 feet deep and Schoenherr has to determine how far back in the bushes and how deep the fish are holding through a trial-and-error process. “It seems like even in high water though some bushes seem to hold fish every year,” he says.
To read more about Rend Lake and wind tactics that work everywhere, check out the April issue of CrappieNOW magazine.