Big fish bait

[gman234]

hello im relatively new to crappie fishing, although I have been consistently catching lots of keepers. yummmy but uh i was looking for some advice on bait choice targeting monster crappies pushing 14". I havnt tried articials much but i was thinkin more live bait is key. what you guys think?

[crappieseeker]

you can catch big crappie on small or large baits. However i think what you might be talking about is with bigger baits you generally catch bigger fish. Some folks like to troll crank baits and have pretty good luck cathing the bigger fish that way. Also live bait at times tends to bring bigger fish on occasions.

[MSCRAPPIE33]

1/4 oz jig heads and Southern Pros 2.5" walleye tubes

[sparkie51]

Fish with the prevalent size of minnow that lives in your lake. I catch a lot of 14+ size crappies on 1-2 inch minnows, tails, and grubs. But I only target crappies in the early spring, I switch species after the end of April. The predominante size of minnow is very small at this time of the year (1-2 inch) but in a couple of months those small minnows will be 3-4 inch. If I was going to target crappies I would use a larger minnow later in the spring.

[gman234]

thanks for the advice and I was thinkin about tryin it after dark tonight where are the crappies at night? by the way its windy and a storm is comin in for the weekend im guessin.

[Granite]

Gman 234, i don't know where you are in Minn. but i lived in Wisconsin for 57 years. I targeted big crappie and Walleye for years. The lakes i fished were deep and clear. I have caught 2# crappies, which is big for the north. I have caught them down to 55 feet and they would regurgatate Smelt. I used a long snell slip sinker rig, 6 foot leader and a floating jig head witha 2-3 inch fathead minnow. See if that helps you. Granite

[gman234]

ya im fishing lake minnetonka, the water is kinda dirty but still clear enough to see. i dont have any elctronics so i fish weeds to dropoffs by sight and guess mostly.

[skiptomylu]

I have caught lots of very big crappie on very small jigs and Roadrunners. Do it all the time and maybe it's partially the lake you fish. Last year was the first I didn't get one 17" or over. Have already had many 13", good number of 14" and some 15" & 16" this year all on jigs. My first 4 this year I was trying out a new little hair jig I was making for some guys in Louisiana and went down to my bank and fished it under a cork and got 4 in about 20 minutes, including me running around looking for something to put that first one in, LOL! Anyway the smallest was 14".

It was just a 1/16 oz wedge head or arrow head as I call it with red thread and kip tail hair tail.

Skip

[gman234]

Granite, great advice man. I went with the big ol fatheads on yellow jig and it really produced! i caught many 10" and even caught a 12" thanks alot I will keep tryin for the biguns

[sac-a-lait]

Big minners OR 1/4 oz TIN Horse Head Jig w/ 2/0 Hook and a #1 Colorado Silver Blade...Never caught a bean on one yet...