Thread: Cappie flies, maybe?

Originally Posted by fish_4_all

Ithrew over 40 different patterns of flies this year for crappie and have yet to hook anything but a couple 4 inches on them.

Again, I would suggest checking out Rick Zieger's articles at FAOL. He's been writing a weekly column over there for several years. All of his articles are in the archives. He's been very successful at catching crappie on flies.

Yep, been reading them off and on since you gave me the link. Might actually put me on fish this next year. Thank you.

Best crappie flies for me have been the old coachman streamer, black nose dance, and the hornberg. Tied very sparse and no weight. Hope this helps you some.

Originally Posted by slipbobber

Best crappie flies for me have been the old coachman streamer, black nose dance, and the hornberg. Tied very sparse and no weight. Hope this helps you some.

Which black nosed dance/dace are you referring to? I found a couple hundred different ones. I assume it is the one with the tinsel body, white and brown wing and red tail, right?

That's the one, but have been known to change things around a little. Sometimes change the tail to something with a little chartreuse and sometimes a little blue. Probably is the best is the coachman, real simple and really catches fish. But you will probably catch a lot of bass and in the smaller sizes big blugill like it too. Dang the luck! But if I'm catching something on the flyrod I'm happy! Good luck hope they work for you.

Can't argue with that, maybe I have to tie a few and add them to the other ones just to see if it makes a difference.

If those don't work try my secret weapon. I tie a staple on the back of a light wire hook leave the leg of the staple extended out, bend forward and trim to length. This makes a wire keeper on a regular hook much like what is on cast jigheads but holds much better. Now slide a crappie tube of choice on the hook just like you would with a regular cast jighead, that wire keeper will hold the tube well enough even for a flyrod. Make some up for 1 inch, 1.5 in. and maybe some for 2 in. tubes and if needed add some beads or lead eyes for weight, if you are fishing shallow you really don't need any weight just the weight of the hook and tube will allow for a nice slow fall rate. Easy, fast to make, and the combinations are endless. Not exactly traditional but guaranteed to catch fish or your money back.

F4A I noticed something the couple of times I was in crappie waters this summer at Potholes. The crappie seemed to like pink and bright green like an insect green and red, white and blue (light turquoise this is the actual marabou name I think) jigs compared to all others. I was using a jig pole and just bouncing it up and down fishing in about 25 or feet of water and only going down about 8 feet. I didn't slay them but I did ok I would have had better luck if I was using a rod that I could have gotten deeper with but I had a fixed line. I noticed the crappie here just don't seem to like natural stuff compared to bright stuff. I have a lot more experimenting to do but that has been my experience crappie fishing in WA (which is limited to just this past summer). I will definitely be hitting harder this spring and summer, especially summer since I won't be in school this summer like I was this past one so I will be able to experiment a lot more as well.

I experienced the same thing on as with the crappie turning up their nose to everything I threw at them in a little pond outside of Yakima they would look at it but they would check it out and turn away no matter what I put in found of them. I will be trying to fly fish this year for them as well I found a nice little area that is fed by the Columbia that I am planning to check out this coming year as well that looks like a haven for crappie so I will see what I can figure out there I will be taking my pontoon and floating the area to see what I can come up with.

Hit me up with a PM with your email and maybe we can come up with some ideas to work on together and if you get the urge you can head this way sometime and we can see what we can figure out on some known crappie waters.