Tubes or Hair?

[CrappiePappy]

Where I fish, you best have a weedless jighead on or you're liable to not get it back
This prompts me to generally prefer plastics over hair, as there aren't many weedless hair jigs in my tackle. Open water casting, and when trolling, I'll use hair/feather jigs ... and take my chances on getting them hung up. But, when casting wood, or docks, and anytime I'm probing into the brush to finesse a fish out ... I'm mostly going to be using a weedless jig w/plastic body.

... cp

[Tony from Oak Point]

I don't fish hair jigs for crappie but will lump marabou in the same category. Most of the time I'll fish tubes, feathers, and shad style baits (both swimming minnow and "do nothing" style) all in the same trip and just see what works best when. I'd say 50% of the time there is no clear advantage. Weight, size, color, presentation, are probably all more important than hair/feather/plastic IMO.

Marabou and hair are convenient when you are trolling, or when the dinks are out, because they are more durable than plastic. Marabou also holds on your added attractant better.

Plastic is convenient in that you can change colors more easily. There is a lot of variety too. Some days I've got crappie on 3 or 4" worms or craws. (I'll target bass and crappie at the same time a lot of days). Later in the same day I'm catching big crappie best on 1/32 oz 1 1/2" tube jigs where the lead is completely hidden by the hollow tube. If you try tubes, try solid body and hollow body. Well, there is my 2 cents.