Attracting Baitfish Using Night Fishing Lights Details Here!

crappie fishing at night attracting baitfish

You can use the same methods of locating crappie that you would use during the day when you plan on crappie fishing at night. Crappies will still be hanging out at natural crappie habitat during the night. When you decide on the body of water you plan to go crappie fishing at night on you will have to do some preliminary scouting during the light hours to locate likely night fishing for crappie hot spots. The best spots will be secluded and blocked by the wind, with very little current.
You want your night fishing lights to be able to work effectively and wind can have some adverse effects when you are trying to attract zooplankton and baitfish while you are crappie night fishing.

Good spots that normally hold fish at night are bridges, artificial fish attractors that many states place in the water to attract crappie and other game fish species. Also rocky shorelines and points that are out of the wind and current could be likely spots to find crappie. (specks)

It is important that there is a wind break and no current because you want to attract zooplankton to your area using two basic types of night fishing lights which are a underwater fishing light, and a floating fishing light. Once you attract the zooplankton baitfish will soon to follow, as well as the white perch (crappie) your crappie fishing at night trip will become very active. You could catch some of those large trophy slabs everyone always talks about. Large crappie seem to be more active at night and are less wary.

You will to set up your 12 volt fishing lights and floating fishing lights close together and in pairs, If you have more then one set. It is my preference to drop and anchor my submerged fishing light first and then position a 12 volt fishing light on top near the underwater fishing light. If you have 2 sets, you could put 1 pair of 12 volt fishing light set ups at each end of your boat.

Once you have your night fishing light set ups in place it is best to wait at least ½ hr before you make a decision to move to a different location. It takes time for the underwater fishing lights to attract zooplankton which baitfish will feed on. It also takes a few minutes for your floating fishing lights to start attracting insects.

If you can get baitfish to come to you, there is a very good chance you will soon attract game fish to your area when you are fishing for crappie at night. It is best to have multiple crappie fishing rigs set up to with a variety of different crappie baits. The floating fishing lights will be attracting insects close to the surface so you will want to have one crappie pole or more, set up with a 1/8ounce or smaller crappie hair looking jig that looks like an insects. A little trick that always seems to work for me is to bounce the crappie jig off the floating fishing light so it looks like a jumping bug falling into the water. You should also have at least one crappie rig set up to fish at a deeper depth down around your underwater fishing lights. These crappie poles need to be set up with crappie live baits like shad or crappie minnows. Once you start to see swarms of baitfish around your underwater fishing and insects around your floating fishing lights that when the fun will start!