Shooting Docks For Lake Lanier Crappie

Wyatt’s first slab of the day came on his third cast — or third shot, to be exact.

We had pulled up to a covered dock along the Chattahoochee River near Clarks Bridge and he rifled a 1/32-oz. jig into the dark, back corner of the dock, splitting a 12-inch gap between the dock and a moored boat. At first he let the jig sink, then began a slow retrieve before a twitch in the line telegraphed the strike.

“You better get the net for this one,” he said. “With 2-lb. line you can’t take any chances.”

I netted the fat, 14-oz. slab, and we had our first fish early on a mid-April morning.

Wyatt Wilson, of Buford, is a Lake Lanier crappie specialist, and he keeps records of his fishing success. Last year on Lake Lanier, a lake not highly renowned for crappie, he caught 2,538 crappie.

Our biggest crappie weighed 14 ounces, but Lanier slabs up to 1 1/2 pounds aren’t unusual, says Wyatt.

Wyatt fishes primarily in the north end of the lake — generally up the Chattahoochee above Gainesville. “The south end of the lake is too clear, and the fish are too deep,” he said.

Wyatt is not a troller. He prefers the active approach of shooting boat docks or fishing deep brush, and there’s no doubt shooting docks is a successful technique. His 1998 Lake Lanier crappie-fishing journal is printed on page 29, and it shows that it’s not just a springtime technique — he catches crappie year round. He can hold his own in competition with trollers, too.

During a March 13, 1999, Crappie USA tournament, Wyatt and fishing partner Charles Dickinson, also of Buford, placed second in the Crappie USA tournament on Lanier. Their 10-crappie limit weighed 13.7 pounds — a 1.37-lb. per-fish average.

While Lanier isn’t on the caliber of Lake Weiss or Lake Oconee for crappie, it provides good crappie fishing and some occasional trophy slabs. The lake-record for white and black crappie are 3-lbs., 2-ozs., and 3-lbs., 4-ozs., respectively. Wyatt’s personal record is a 2 1/4-lb. slab that he pulled from under a deep-water dock.

A deep dock is Wyatt’s favorite jig-shooting target. He passes up shallow docks to fish docks with 15 to 20 feet of water under them. Bigger, darker, deeper docks, are his keys to finding concentrations of fish.

“I like to see a variety of depths under a dock,” said Wyatt, as he pointed out a dock with water depth ranging from five at the back to more than 20 at the front. “Lanier crappie seem to like to be able to move up and down, so a dock with a greater depth range is more likely to hold fish.”

Wyatt fishes with lead-head jigs he pours himself. He dresses the lead-heads with 1 1/2-inch tube jigs. Usually, he pinches off some of the tube jig skirt to give the lure a smaller profile.

He prefers lightweight jigs because they fall more slowly, staying in the strike zone longer. He also fishes light line, generally 2-lb. Magna-thin line. The fine mono shows up less and is less affected by the wind.

Wyatt isn’t particularly picky about jig color, although his plastic tray of tube jigs was full of combinations that included chartreuse. Nearly all the fish we caught hit a red/chartreuse combo, but we didn’t experiment with many colors; we didn’t have to.

Usually crappie will hold in the darkest part of the dock, especially during bright, sunny days. But they may be concentrated under one specific area — a corner of the dock, as opposed to the center.

The problem with docks is that they can be impossible to cast to. Covered docks often have closed doors, or there are ropes, boat bumpers, or dock supports in the way. This is where the dock-shooting tactic pays off. Dock shooting is a technique that uses the flex in a rod to propel the jig.

To shoot a jig, Wyatt lets the jig hang until it’s about even with the first eyelet on his rod above the reel. With his left hand, he then holds the jig head between his thumb and forefinger. With the bail open he pinches the line against the rod handle and extends the rod, pointing toward his target, putting a bow in the rod tip. To shoot accurately, the rod, the line, and the water should all be parallel.

The dock-shooting technique — rod and fishing line are both aligned parallel to the water.

To shoot, he releases the jig, which shoots forward; a half-instant later, he releases the line, and the jig rockets nearly straight away from the rod tip —  and under low-slung dock doors, between gaps in dock flotation and into the crack between moored boats and the side of the dock.

At least that’s what it does when Wyatt shoots. He makes accurate shots through keyhole-sized gaps look easy.

As a dock-shooting rookie, however, my jig was as likely to plunk into the water at the rod tip or ricochet off dock flotation. Accurate shooting takes a bit of coordination — and lots of practice.

One trick Wyatt uses to encourage a strike from under a dock is that he holds the line near the reel with his left hand and twitches the line an inch at a time as the jig falls on a tight line.

“If there’s a crappie following the jig, that can be enough to make it hit,” he said.

Another detail to consider is don’t get too close to a dock. If you ease too close with a bent rod, when your rod snaps forward it may hit the dock and break your rod tip.

The next trick is detecting the subtle strikes on the tiny jigs. Wyatt and I fished on a day with high winds which made “feeling” the jig difficult for Wyatt and impossible for me. Still, on a day better for kite-flying we landed 34 crappie.

For Lanier crappie, good shooting counts. It’s a huge advantage to be able to shoot your jig into the dark recesses under boat docks that non-shooting anglers have to pass up.