Crappie Fishing - Dancing a Jig

Crappie fishing with minnows getting less
productive? Give other crappie fishing techniques
a try, such as fishing with miniature jigs. You
may be surprised at how effective they can be for
heavy stringers of thick slabs.

I couldn’t believe it. The two guys fishing for crappie from a Jonboat near us were pulling in slabs hand over fist, while we sat no more than 50 feet away without a nibble for more than an hour. Yet our depth finder revealed we were over the same brush pile, and, so far as we could see, they were using the same kind of bobber and minnow rigs we were.

I had to find out what they were doing or bust, so paddled the canoe over to them. They were using bobbers, alright. But instead of live minnow each had tied on a pair of miniature jigs.

“Stumbled onto this a couple of years ago, one of them told me. “Apparently, there is just enough action from surface chop to bounce the jigs around. Concentrate on your bobber, and anytime it behaves differently, set the hook.”

That episode took place quite awhile back. But it was the first time I realized crappie fishing could mean more than dunking a minnow in the brush.

The vast majority of those fisherman do nothing more than drown minnows. It’s a time-honored crappie fishing technique. There’s little required in the way of special equipment, although the lighter the tackle the better. Indeed, the best crappie fishermen I know can be spotted easily. They’re the ones in coveralls and greasy John Deere caps, toting a handful of cane poles and a bucketful of minnows. That’s all they need to fill a livewell with the papermouthed battlers.

Most serious crappie addicts go with more sophisticated equipment. I prefer open-faced spinning reels mated to rods running 8 to 11 feet long that have soft tips and some backbone in the butt. Slabs have paper-thin mouths that can tear readily, so it’s easy to overset the hook with a too-stiff rod.

Use a small reel loaded with line testing no more than six pounds. Crappie are not particularly line shy, but heavy line can affect the way a bait moves. The fish are sensitive to that awkward action. Often, when you aren’t catching fish when others are, changing to a lighter line can make the difference.

This is especially true when using the mini- and micro-jigs (almost universally called Pop-Eyes, but that’s actually a brand name). Try tying a 1/8th or 1/16th ounce jig to eight or ten pound line and watch what happens. You’ll lighten up real fast!

Diminutive jigs should always be part of your crappie fishing armament. Tipping them with a pinhead minnow, or even a waxworm, sometimes sweetens the offering, but isn’t usually necessary. Instead, tie a dropper on your line, with a tiny jig tied to it and a second jig tied to the main line. If you can handle it without fouling, a cast of three jigs can be even more effective.

Suspend the jigs under a bobber just big enough to support them, and let the jigs flutter down to an appropriate depth. Even on the calmest days, the ripples and wave action of the lake imparts just enough movement to pique a crappie’s interest. But they can spit them out fast, so set the hook at any sign of a strike.

I can’t stress enough the need for the smallest bobber you can use. Crappie rarely hit these jigs very hard, and the smaller the bobber the more likely you are to detect a soft take. Many anglers actually adapt porcupine quills for this purpose when crappie fishing, using bright paint to make them more visible on the water surface.

For depths below four feet, use a slip bobber rig. This entails using a sliding bobber with a stop---usually a very small spring or a rubber band wound onto the line---to control depth. This lets you handle any water depth without awkward casting.

There’s a running feud as to whether or not crappie can detect color. Despite the debate, yellows and whites seem to attract them best, so your jig selection should include both colors, along with some all-red, all-black, and red-and-white, in sizes ranging from 1/6th to ¼ ounce.

You should also have a variety of tail materials because the fish do show decided preferences on any particular day. For day-in, day-out results, marabou is best, due to its life-like action in the water. Some days the crappie want it with a chenille body and other days they don’t. Sometimes, for no particular reason, bucktail or similar man-made material is preferred to the marabou. And other times they’ll take a plastic curly tail and nothing else. So stock your jig box in depth.

When fish are concentrated in the tree tops you usually don’t have to cast very far. Once you locate a school of crappie, anchor right over them and lower the rig straight down. It the fish are shy, anchor 10 or 15 feet from the holding structure and cast towards them.

Alternatively, give power-drifting a try. With this technique you use your trolling motor to gently float over the holding area, just as if the wind were pushing you. The motor, obviously, gives you more control of the speed and direction of the drift.

When the fish are scattered, trolling works with these jigs, letting you cover more area. You might have to add a little more weight, though, to keep the baits down where the fish are suspended, because they tend to ride up when moving.

In such cases, I like to use a so-called fish-finder rig, with the weight attached to the bottom of the main line, and the jigs tied to droppers spaced 12-16 inches apart. Experiment with the weight until you have just the right amount to keep you in the strike zone.