Night fishing for Crappie is the ticket right now. I’ve heard good reports from Bartlett, Alamo and Roosevelt. No reports from Pleasant or San Carlos in the last week. Roosevelt seems to be the best. Some guys from Tonto Basin reported catching close to 200 one night last week. If you go to San Carlos be very careful, especially at night. There are no marker buoys.

Last Saturday the Arizona Crappie Association had a meeting at Alamo Lake.  For those who aren’t familiar with Alamo, its about 30 north of Wenden, AZ.  It’s a long drive and very hot but well worth the trip. Because of its distance from the Valley, Alamo isn’t a very busy lake and rarely do you see water skiers or jet skies.

There is a really nice little store at the Ranger Station that sells supplies, tackle, ice and minnows. They close at 5pm.

Also, there are several really nice camp sites there that include restrooms with showers. Alamo is a state park and their web address is http://azstateparks.com/Parks/ALLA/index.html.

When we got to the lake about 5 p.m. it was a balmy 106. So we put the boats in the water and headed up to the cliffs by the damn to find some shade. There were 5 of us on one boat and 3 on another. While working the west shoreline our partners caught a nice Crappie and found another one floating. Then we headed to the damn where we caught several nice bass and a couple nice catfish.

As it started to get dark we moved just a couple hundred yard from the damn into about 35 feet of water, anchored and set up our lights. There was a nice breeze blowing that made it very comfortable. Finally about 9:30 p.m. the Crappie started to bite. We caught them on minnows, soft plastic jigs and feather jigs. The new “Slab Daddy” jigs from Bass Pro Shops worked real well.

It wasn’t exactly “on fire” but we did catch fish all night. We boated somewhere between 80 and 100 Crappies of which we took 50 home. Our sister ship got about 30. Some of them were smaller but we got several over 2 pounds. The big Crappie of the night was lbs. 14ozs.

Remember that when you fish Crappie at night you want to put as much light in the water as possible. There are some high dollar LEDs on the market that are awesome. Bass Pro and other shops usually stock green florescent tubes that run under $25 and do very well. If you go with the tubes I would use at least 2 of the 21″ ones. Also, the less moon there is the better. If you go on a full moon you will need more lights than on a new moon.

If you need any help or just want to share some tips, I’m working the opening shift at Bass Pro all week. We open at 10 a.m. and I’ll be there until 3 or 4 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday.