k guys lets talk Crappie!!!

alrighty, first i wanna thank all the helpful folks that give reliable information and generally are just great fisherman/woman that like to chat. Im new to this site and im floored how great a resource this is. Now that the obligitory hugfest is done lets talk crappie. Im gonna be doin some serious crappie work over the next week. ill be up in the Eau Claire lakes area and have some great lakes available to me. What i want to know is what are your favorite tactics/plastics/lures etc for goin after crappies. Im not new to crappie fishin but ill admit ive fallen into a rut in terms of my approach. Ive been limiting myself to bobber/slip bobber minnow rig, small twisters or tube jigs. I need some fresh brain food to kinda get me goin again with the newer techniques. thanks in advance for any help ya'll can toss my way. Be Safe and Good Fishin Cronk EDIT::: this post is time sensitive!!! any help would be just great!

My favorite way to fish early season crappies is to sight fish with either with a plain hook and minnow, or a plain long shank hook with a 2-3 inch chartreuse twister tail. Let the twister sink, very slow and just a little twitch right in front of their nose. I stay away from any bobbers or sinkers this time of year because the crappies seem to spook easier in the shallower water. Since both rigs are so light, I would recommend putting on new, light line to get the best casting you can.

here is a video from this past weekend showing some gear we used while up in Oneida County. The torpedo floats with the betts spiders work awesome all summer long! troy

I slay the slabs on Beetle Spins. That would be my number 1 choice for the little paper-lips.

I like to take a smaller bobber with a small fly (preferably brighter colors...pink,chartreuse,blue,orange, and white) 4ft behind it and cast the shallows. Use the bobber like your jigging letting the fly rise and fall slowly. If the crappies are in shallow enough I'll use little poppers with the bobber also. Good luck and tight lines

This time of year when the fish are in shallow, I like to cast a small pink tube jig on a bare hook. For extra weight I'll put on a small clip bobber, just so I can cast further. The tube falls really slow and they grab it as it falls. I actually got a ton of bluegills last weekend while targeting crappies too. That's always been my go to artificial for them. I've done well on feather jigs too.

When I crappie fish I love to just use jigs. That is in the sense just keep casting out and reeling in the bait many many times. The bait I prefer to use is various colors of 3 inch twister tail grubs on various colors of a 1/16 ounce jig being caste with an ultra-light open spining reel with about 4-6 lb line on it. Colors vary depending on where fishing. But usually for the grubs the best colors for me consist of white, yellow, chartreuse, orange, purple and best color for jigs are about the same. These colors alone by them self work but sometimes mixing them work even better. Either way my best weapon against a crappie is the jig and twister tail grub. I don't use anything else.