It was a fortunate confluence of events leading me to Lake Greenwood earlier this month. This late February, March and early April I got hooked on shallow crappie fishing on the lower end of Lake Murray, and I was disappointed when the fish made their annual move deeper. This year I have also been getting regular Lake Greenwood fishing reports from Guide Daniel Skipper, and all year I have been very impressed by his knowledge of the lake as well as his catch rate. But I was intrigued when – even as the weather got very hot – he was still catching Lake Greenwood crappie around relatively shallow brush. I most certainly was not, and so I was pleased when Daniel had an afternoon slot available to take a buddy and me out on Lake Greenwood to try and fill a cooler with crappie and teach us about the fishery.
Lake Greenwood
Created between 1935 and 1940 with the construction of Buzzard’s Roost Dam, Lake Greenwood is located near the towns of Greenwood and Ninety Six about an hour to the northwest of Columbia and around forty five minutes to the southeast of Greenville. The waters of the Saluda and Reedy Rivers come from the northwest and feed into Lake Greenwood. Lake Greenwood has 212 miles of shoreline and 11,400 surface acres of water. A relatively shallow lake, Lake Greenwood averages 18 feet deep and goes about 60 feet down at its deepest point.
Fishermen have historically targeted Lake Greenwood’s healthy populations of largemouth bass, stocked striped bass, black and a few white crappie, bream and channel and flathead catfish. White bass are also naturally occurring in Greenwood, but today there are far more invasive white perch. There is also a huge population of spotted bass that was not present just a few years ago, and on the day that Daniel took us out we caught lots of spotted bass while targeting crappie and saw even more schooling all over the lake. The most significant forage fish on Lake Greenwood are threadfin shad, and particularly as dusk arrived schools of threadfin were visible just below the surface everywhere.
Seasonal crappie patterns
This article will focus on summer patterns for catching crappie, particularly over brush and with a mention of bridges, but after temperatures start to drop in the fall fish begin to leave the brush. They don’t all move at once, and the schools of crappie might decline from 100 fish to 50 and then continue to dwindle. Some of these fish will start to roam, while others will head to hard structure like bridges and concrete. Sometime in late October or November the fishing will get really inconsistent when Lake Greenwood turns over, but by December the fishing will pick up again.
In December and January fish can generally be caught tight-lining (pushing) in creeks where electronics show that there is bait or around bridges, and particularly after the first of the year temperature-sensitive fish will heat for warmer water during the day.
Everything is temperature-dependent, but sometime in February fish will be starting to think about moving into creeks and trolling (pulling) multiple rods can be very effective through March and into April. In the early spring crappie will group up at the mouth of creeks and then move into them, and Daniel notes that muddy areas are generally best. They warm faster and hold more bait. Around March large numbers of fish usually also group up around docks.
Again dependent on temperature, the Greenwood crappie spawn can be spread out anywhere from February through June, although on Lake Greenwood it is usually heaviest in April. Fish don’t all spawn at once and this year the period was very extended. Fish will spawn around any sort of cover near the bank.
Post-spawn some fish will go out to open water to rest or roam around, others will head to brush, and some will stay on the same shallow brush where they spawned. The net result is that between the staggered spawn and different fish behaving differently post-spawn you can do about anything on Lake Greenwood in the spring and catch crappie. But by the time it gets hot, and certainly when summer arrives, you had better be fishing brush!
Summer brush fishing
It was July and the water (and air) were 90 degrees the day we went out with Guide Daniel Skipper, but despite the temperatures we interested in more than just deep cover. The first place we ran over was a sunken pontoon boat in less than 15 feet of water, and even though we did not catch any fish off of it there were tons of crappie holding to the cover. Still, it is rare to fish much shallower than 12 feet on Greenwood once it gets very hot. It is equally unusual for Daniel to look deeper than 25 feet. While a general rule is that deeper brush will hold bigger fish, this is far from universal. What is generally true is that Greenwood crappie school by size, and so if you start catching fish of one size expect the other fish from the same school to be about the same size.
When fishing for summer crappie you should not be surprised if the fish are a little smaller than in the spring, as many of the bigger fish may simply be roaming in the summer. There are always fish in open water as they move between brush piles, but bigger fish are not as dependent on the security of numbers and so they are more likely to be loners or in small groups.
As for whether any particular area of the lake is more productive than another in the summer, Daniel does not find this. We went from the mid-lake to the lower end and then back up the lake, catching fish in each, and Daniel’s experience is that each area will have its own population of crappie that does not move too much into other sections. He thinks of them as “neighborhoods”, and for example the Lighthouse Landing area will have its own population of crappie.
While there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules about the location or depth of brush that will hold crappie in the summer, Daniel does have some very particular thoughts about the nature of the cover. It needs to be vertical, and while Christmas trees are good in shallow water, for summer brush they do not offer the type of openings that are needed for fish to get in and hide. Daniel only uses sweet gum trees when he is building his own brush piles.
While his approach will change later in the summer, when fish first get out on brush they are not as spooky and Daniel will run over brush and mark what fish are holding there with his electronics. He will then throw out a marker to give a clear visual cue to orient his approach. Later in the summer when fish are more skittish he will just start fishing without the initial run-over, and he notes that shallower fish are spookier than deeper ones. Daniel does use his spot-lock to anchor over a brush pile, but he will also move off and then make different approaches on the brush to give different presentations rather than just sitting in one location.
Early in the season when fish first get out on brush piles, Daniel will heavily target them casting jigs. He uses a Daiwa D-Shock 1000b combo spooled with Sunline Super FC Sniper 4-pound fluorocarbon line and he ties the jig with a loop knot to impart extra action. Almost exclusively he will be fishing Fish Stalker Slab Tail jigs (or a very similar prototype bait he is testing for Fish Stalker) in Blue Dew color, although in particularly clear conditions he will also employ the Glimmer Blue color.
While jigs will still catch fish after the crappie have been on brush for a while, as the summer wears on minnows are more and more important. By the very late summer Daniel’s boat will exclusively be fishing minnows for highly pressured fish. In early July we were still in the period where jigs and minnows could both be effective, but more of our bites came on minnows. When we were sitting over a brush pile that electronics showed was holding fish Daniel would put out five or six of the ultralight rods around the boat. Each of these was spooled with 6-pound Mr. Crappie Hi-Vis 6-pound monofilament in fluorescent green Carolina-rigged with a ¼ ounce egg sinker above a small swivel with approximately a 14-inch leader and a #6 hook. While Daniel prefers the color of shiners over toughies, he doesn’t really think it matters and is more interested in size. He only wants “tails and eyeballs,” meaning that heavily pressured summer fish are more likely to take a small minnow.
A few additional considerations include depth of presentation and peak conditions. While electronics will tell you how deep on a brush pile fish are holding and accordingly where baits should be presented, it is worth remembering that crappie have their eyes in the top of their head and feed up. For example, if we were fishing brush 17 feet down it was not unusual to have most of our baits about 8 feet deep.
Additionally, time of day can make a big difference for fishing summer brush piles on Lake Greenwood. Morning and even mid-day are the best times for fishing this pattern, and in the late afternoon and evening into the night fish will pull off of brush and start to hold around bridges or roam. Cloud cover is also a negative, and bright sunny conditions usually put fish tightest to brush.
It is intriguing that sometimes the best bite is first thing in the morning on brush, because it is well-known that overnight crappie will hold to bridges and so it is unclear exactly what time they leave and head out to brush. While we did not spend a lot of time fishing bridges, as dusk approached we used the same 6-rod approach around a bridge and caught a handful of crappie. You can also cast jigs at bridges.
To learn more or try it…
We experienced plenty of doubles and triples and filled a cooler with crappie the day that we went out with Guide Daniel Skipper, but the bite wasn’t as fast as I understand that it sometimes can be – particularly early in the season. It also didn’t help that we couldn’t get out to the lake until the late afternoon, when as a comfortable surprise but a negative for the fishing it was starting to cloud over. Still, my buddy and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip as well as our time with Daniel. Too many people who have been out with multiple fishing guides have had the experience of a humorless guide barking at them when they don’t do something exactly right, but that is not the case crappie fishing with Daniel Skipper. He is relaxed with a laid-back sense of humor, and as he points out “If missing one or two bites determines your day, then you have bigger problems.” He also has one of the most comfortable boats I have been on, with a pushed forward center console that makes for a very open feel.
The fall hunting season may have him up in a tree stand more and fishing over trees a little less, but close to 12 months a year Guide Daniel Skipper will take you out on Lake Greenwood for crappie or striped bass, his other fishing love. He also guides on Clarks Hill and sometimes Russell. Daniel provides the regular AHQ Insider fishing reports for Lake Greenwood crappie and striper on this site, and members can read his full, updated reports each week. But whether you are looking to catch a bunch of fish for a fish fry, learn Lake Greenwood, or just do some relaxing, beer-drinking fishing with an expert guide, the real fun is going out on the boat with Guide Daniel Skipper. To book a trip he can be reached at 864-430-0488 or by message to his Facebook page.
