How to pinpoint drop your bait where you want around trees/stumps

[livemusic]

This is about a need for more precise fishing with jigs or shiners. Even with a bobber, or I might need a slip bobber to make this work.

We have a lot of trees and stumps here in this area to fish around and I tell ya, if there is wind, it is tough fishing. That is if you have a length of line out. I primarily bass fish, so, I'm no expert crappie fisherman. But I seem to remember that when I did fish with a pole, I would make my line length a little shorter than the length of the pole. But today, we had wind, and it was really hard fishing. Extremely difficult to put your bait where you wanted due to high wind. Not fun fishing, but I was gonna tough it out, and did, for a few hours. Was easy to get tangled in the tree limbs. I was thinking that you could just have a long pole and a much shorter line, and just stick your rod tip closer to where you want the bait to drop down. Again, I guess that would work with a slip bobber. Anyone know what I mean, and how to do it?

I also have thought of using a spinning rod/reel and I could do kind of a bass fishing flipping technique where you hold the line your left hand and kind of feed the line to the desired spot as you flip it in there. The hook/bait/weight/slipbobber ensemble would stay low to the water during the flip, and you would be less likely to snag on the tree limbs.

It seems you want to get the bait reasonably close to the tree trunk, not 4 feet away!

EDIT: As for using a spinning rod/reel (even baitcast crappie reel), how long a rod is reasonable? Any models come to mind?