Night fishing question

[Swamper AR]

Been reading comments and questions on night fishing here for a while. In an effort to escape the brutal sun and heat I gave it a try. I fished an area 15-30' of water that is known to hold crappie. I had a really good swarm of minnows around my light. But I was fishing with artificials and didn't have the slightest bump. My question is: Can you only catch fish on minnows at night? Or is it possible to catch on jigs but I wasn't doing something right?

[Bob # 1]

Have heard that someone was trying lighted jigs outside the light cirlce. Not for sure how that went.
Myself am a minnow man,
One trick you can try is rinse your hands with fish scent, it is proven fact human scent can be smelled by the fish.
Or get from Slab here on the forum fish scent.

Inclind to believe part of your problem,
Another thought are you fishing in the dark waters?

[LittleJohn]

I always have my minnows and won't even try the jigs until start catching with minnow. Then I'll leave my mimmow poles in the holders and use the jig pole in my hand,working the jig some. I 've seen nights when the jig will out performs the minnows and catches a bigger fish.
LittleJohn

[gabowman]

Never tried artificials at night. I have read a couple replies before saying they did good on jigs..........but like I said, minnows was the preferred bait for me and I never tried jigs.

["G"]

I have never tried jigs at night.....but if I do I will put crappie nibbles on them so they will have some scent.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using Tapatalk 2

[CrappiePappy]

I have caught Crappie at night on jigs/Roadrunners ... not in the direct light, but usually in the fringe darkness. To clarify that statement, though ... you need to know that I was not fishing under lights that are on the boat, but around docks that have large lights off the front of the dock (close to the water's surface). And, while I have seen Crappie chasing various baitfish minnows in the direct light, I have yet to get one of those to hit ANY bait that I've thrown at them. They seemed "locked onto" the size/shape of whatever baitfish was in the circle of light, and I didn't have any baits that were similar in size. Those that I did catch were below or outside of the circle of light.

You must also understand that I'm talking about only a few isolated incidents, and not a long term collection of experiences. Other than those few times, my main bait was live minnows or Silversides.

You may have been doing EVERYTHING right .... but, there may not have been any/many Crappie around (at that time)
Back 50 or so years ago, when I fished with my Grandparents at night for Crappie .... we fished under a two burner Coleman lantern, placed over the side of the boat at about the middle. I sat in the front, my Grandmother in the middle, & Grandfather at the back ... and there didn't seem to be any difference in the number of bites that any one of us got. But, that was back in the day of nothing but minnows/Silversides ... many, many years before I started relying on jigs more often than live bait.

... cp

[skiptomylu]

I use a minnow and jig set up. I tie on a big jig, like 1/8 or 1/4 on the bottom and above that say 18" or so I tie on a Gamakatsu Drop Shot hook (I just like that hook and in a #1 or 2). Usually the bigger crappie do come on the jig. Personally I think fish hitting the minnow even if smaller will help activate the bigger fish and they will take either then, but mostly for me on the jig. Last time out we got fish on both the jig and minnow, but the 16" crappie was on the jig as was the next biggest crappie.

Oh just noticed my Sig, that jig is one I was using last time out at night and it's a 1/4 Oz.

[AZfisherdude]

I have caught them on both but always like to have minnows to mix things up. Also, I always bring my throw net when night fishing with lights. Catch some shad or other minnows circling and you got yourself a good bite!
I also tend to fish on the edges of the light and not directly in it.

[DrJohn]

Minnows= crappie candy!!!!!!!

[NIMROD]

I never fish at night anymore but I feel day or night they still gotta eat and should hit same baits day or night.