North Texas Fall Crappie Fishing with Brian Carter

November 18, 2025

North Texas Fall Crappie Fishing with Brian Carter

Phillip Gentry

 

According to B’n’M pro-staffer Brian Carter, the best thing about fall fishing in North Texas is that the weather is starting to cool down and the cooler temps are having a positive effect on the crappie bite in powerhouse lakes like Lake Ray Roberts and Lake Fork, plus smaller venues like Bridgeport and Lake Lavon. Carter with water temperatures in the mid 70’s, said the crappie fishing is very similar to spring crappie fishing action.

“This is easy jig fishing right now,” said Carter. “Near my home I have choices between standing timber lakes like Ray Roberts and Fork, and planted brush pile lakes, which are some of the smaller bodies – Lavon and Bridgeport.”

While each lake maintains it’s own crappie fishing personality, when asked what the best target areas were, Carter said to look for crappie to be holding somewhere between 11 to 14 feet down in and around wood structure in water depths of 16 – 20 feet deep.

Carter claims cooler water temperatures make for easy jig fishing.

Generally speaking, that means that crappie anglers should be heading into the back third of major tributaries to find the appropriate water depth and watch either the surface for timber sticking out of the water or keep track of underwater brush piles on sonar.

“Right now, every baitfish in the lake is up shallow,” he said. “In the evenings, the surface will be rolling with bait, so you can expect to have a lot of competition when flipping a jig around timber this time of year.”

The similarity to spring fishing ends at this point as Carter said he never finds fish much closer to the banks during the fall. Using forward-facing sonar from the front of his boat, he will ease up to within 12 – 14 feet of a standing tree identify a good crappie or two on the screen and pitch a jig up against the wood or just past it and let the bait swing back towards the boat.

Forward-facing sonar has changed his bait selections from big ¼ oz jigs to smaller, weighted 1/32 jig heads.

“By now, everyone has their own tips and tricks for using forward-facing sonar,” he said, “but for me, it’s downsizing the bait. I used to be a huge fan of a ¼ ounce jig and a 2 ½ inch jig body but I’ve discovered that a smaller profile bait gets better response. Crappie definitely follow it more.”

Carter’s go-to pitching set up is a 10-foot B’n’M Brush Cutter rod – what he calls a broom stick with a reel attached. He loves the rod for its sensitive tip for verifying bites he’s watching on screen, but also for getting slab crappie up and away from the timber before they can hang him up.

 

Many anglers have discovered the action and size of the jig means more to crappie than color.

On the business end of the 20-pound braided line is a 1/8-ounce egg sinker tied above a 1/32-ounce jig head. On the jig head, he will use a 1 ½ inch jig body and may even cut that back to 1 inch by taking the very end off. He said the egg sinker gets the bait down quickly to the fish but it’s the smaller jig that creates the magic.

“These fish are not as decisive as springtime fish,” he said. “It takes a little more finesse to get them to bite and that’s why I’ve abandoned the much larger jigs that I used to be so fond of.”

As for jig colors, Carter said lately he’s been using a solid black Crappie Magnet Roo with a chartreuse head, but he doesn’t feel that color is nearly as important to crappie as both the size of the bait and the presentation of the jig itself.

“That’s something else that forward-facing sonar has taught me, I can pitch that jig to the fish and see him turn towards it, then I can speed it up, slow it down, try to hold it in place, or take it away from him. It changes with the mood of the fish.”

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