Fishing the deep winter holes up to 40' deep in early spring will allow an angler to catch a modest amount of crappie.
To have a great catch of crappie, fishing pre spawn areas is the ticket.
Fishing the sand beaches & rocky shorelines with jig & minnow in 10- 18 feet of water is effective. Also the outer rock points of bays which the crappie will eventually enter to spawn. The crappie in all situations are usually biting in about 12 feet of water. When water temps warm (65-70)crappie will be found inside the bays prominently. Using your electronics to locate these crappie is a must. Locating independent bottom bolders out 100'or so from shore will quite often yield a good catch of crappie. Again finding the rock is one thing, we need to use our depth finders to identify the crappie around this structure. Keeping your boat directly over the fish is a must. Try to determine if the crappie are on the bottom or suspended. This will tell you were your jig depth should be.
Crappie seem to always stage in the same areas each year before spawning.
Crappie fishing in the spring before they spawn can be challenging in the sense that you have to find them. Once that is achieved you got it made.