Crappie fishermen often live and die by their chosen tactics for when fishing for these feisty panfish. Tactics run the gamut from multiple- rod trolling to single-pole jig fishing.
James Howell prefers to tight-line troll all of Spartanburg’s water district lakes, even during the spawn.
“I use two separate bars on the front of my boat with four rod holders in each one,” he said. “The end rods are straight out, and the inside rods point forward; that let’s me cover a swath of nearly 26 feet on each pass I make.”
Howell employs 11-foot rods rigged with a single 1/32nd-ounce jighead and a Fish Stalker slab-tail jig. To keep the baits near vertical in the water while he trolls, he rigs a half-ounce egg weight two feet above the jig and bumps the boat along at speeds of .5 to 1.5 mph using a foot-controlled, bow-mounted trolling motor.
Jay Bruce is a long-liner. Rather than push jigs out the front of the boat, he trolls them to the sides and behind his boat.
“When the fish are deep, say around 12 feet, I start out with a 1/16th-ounce jighead and run from .5 to .8 miles per hour with a variable speed trolling motor,” he said. “If they are higher than that, then I’ll drop down to a 1/32nd- and even down to a 1/48th-ounce jig if they are real close to the surface.
“As the water warms up, fish will get shallower, and my trolling speeds will get faster, up to 1.1 or 1.5 mph,” Bruce said. “By the first of April, look for crappie to be in the backs of creeks or up against the bank during the spawn.”
Single-poling is what most old-timers refer to simply as “fishing” — the days when using eight rods per angler was unheard of. Single-pole tactics can include using one rod to cast jigs —with or without a cork — around structure such as boat docks, laydowns or other shoreline cover. Once the spawn is over and fish move out of the shallows, single poles can be used to vertically jig for crappie in deeper water around bridge pilings and underwater brush.
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