Submitted PhotoExecutive Director of the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum in Leland and crappie expert Billy Johnson knows how to catch Delta crappie on Jigs. Johnson’s father was from Meridian, and his mother was from Blackwater.

Billy Johnson slowly skulled his johnboat through the cypress trees and dissected the cover with his crappie jig much like a skilled surgeon. Johnson danced the jig around the cypress knees and felt the thump of a crappie strike after he jigged it up. He set the hook with his graphite rod and nailed the crappie.

This master crappie angler quickly released the slab into his ice chest and dropped his jig back into the water searching for another lunker.

Johnson, the Executive Director of the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum and brainchild behind the Mississippi Outdoors Hall of Fame in Leland, has spent a lifetime catching crappie in the Delta oxbow lakes. Not too many people have caught thousands of the papermouths, and few have caught as many 2- and 3-pound lunkers as this crappie master has over the last 45 years.

“We like to fish the shallow water around the trees when they’re in there,” Johnson said. “I prefer fishing cypress trees and willows with jigs. We started out with minnows years ago but gradually found out that jigs were the most efficient way to catch fish among the shallow water cypress knees and brush.

“Crapping fishing with a jig is more like an art form. Jigs can be fished in many ways and in all conditions, but you have to use the right technique and give them what they want at that time on a particular day. I’ll keep that jig in the water and just work it slowly around the cypress knees and stumps, and that’s usually all it takes to get bit. Sometimes the wave action from the lake will give the jig a little added action and entice crappie to bite as well.”

Presentation of the jig is a key component to catching lunker-sized crappie. While the jig is perhaps the key to getting a bite, the entire presentation of the lure, from the jig size to line size to the pole and where the fish are located, are all key components of the presentation. Johnson likes to use an 11-foot graphite pole with a fly reel filled with an 8-pound gold colored line.

“I’m going to fish one of Eddie Slater’s ‘Billy Johnson Special’ jigs no matter where I fish,” Johnson said. “Eddie was the king of crappie fishermen back in the early days, and he made a jig that had a red head, silver hairs and a chartreuse tail with a No. 6 bronze hook that he called the Billy Johnson Special because that’s all I would buy from him. The 2014 hall of fame member made and sold hundreds of thousands of jigs around the world.”

Johnson has spent a lifetime fishing Lake Washington and other oxbows in the Delta, and he’s developed his own presentation that is deadly on the oxbow-style lakes.

“In the oxbow lakes like Lake Washington, all of the trees look the same, but they’re not the same,” Johnson said. “I’ve fished places on the lake that really look good and never caught a fish, and I’ve fished some trees that didn’t look very good that continue to produce year after year when the conditions are right.”

Most of the pre-spawn and spawning crappie caught in oxbows are caught in shallow water, and Johnson prefers fishing from the front of an old-style aluminum johnboat while sculling silently with one hand and fishing his jig with a single pole in the other hand.

“The majority of fish we catch on Lake Washington are going to be after the sun goes down until last light in the afternoon, or first thing in the morning,” Johnson said. “You might fish all afternoon and not get a bite, but when the sun goes down and the other boats leave the fish start biting, and you can load the boat!”

Although the trees look the same, the bottom is not the same, and some of Johnson’s best trees are located along beaver runs and shallow ditches that run back through the trees. Some of beaver runs or channels are 3 feet deep on the sides and 5 feet deep in the middle, and the crappie will hold on the trees located along the edge of the channels.

“I’ve been fishing Lake Washington 45 years, and the crappie move up into the same trees every year when the water temperature gets right,” Johnson said. “When it’s right, the key is to fish the same trees you’ve caught them in before. If you’re there for the first time and catch a few around a tree, then keep fishing and come back after 15 to 20 minutes and try it again. I’ve caught three or four around one cypress tree and circled slowly around it and picked up a few more. Sometimes it might take a little while for more to move in, but they will do it.”

If you’re looking for fantastic shallow water crappie fishing, then look no further than the Mississippi River’s Delta oxbows. If you want to learn a thing or two about catching crappie or about the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum, then give Johnson a call at 662-347-4223.

Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comcast.net.