hey fellas i am just wondering if one person here would take the time to explain in detail the process for trolling for crappie. i will thank everyone for they're input & advice inadvance.good fishing to all :confused:
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hey fellas i am just wondering if one person here would take the time to explain in detail the process for trolling for crappie. i will thank everyone for they're input & advice inadvance.good fishing to all :confused:
Trolling is probably as different as the people and places that people fish. I will be glad to help you if I can, just remember that these are my methods, they are in no way meant to be the only methods. I am sure others will chime in with helpful tips.
Basically trolling with crankbaits is an excellent way to locate fish (not just crappie), and cover a lot of water. Find an area you know to have crappie, choose lures that will run at various depths, say 6-16 ft., Bomber, Norman, Rapale,Rebel and others all make good lures for this. Color is a matter of what works on the water you fish, generally whatever color of tube baits you catch them on is a good place to start. Chartreuse, shad, chrome all are favorites.
Rods and reels are a matter of personal preference (I use 6-7ft. medium action, with baitcasting reels, run upon a lot of stripers and Big catfish doing this, and 8-10 lb. test line). Try to run as many rods as possible, different lures and colors, speed will vary, sometimes they want it fast as much as 3-4 mph, at other times as slow as you can go. I generally run 1-1.5 mph, vary line length as this can greatly affect depth. Above all experiment, see what works for you.
I have found this to be a very good way to catch keeper fish, I hardly ever catch a non keeper, 10in. in East Tennessee where I fish. Above all have confidence. It WILL catch fish!!! Hope this helps, if I can answer any questions let me know. This is a great board, the knowledge of these guys is amazing. Possum1
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Originally Posted by possum1
We're catching a good variety of fish trolling Bandit 300s including walleye, white bass, hybrid white bass, stripers, catfish and black bass. Chartreuse has been a good color lately as well as a silver/black back and pearl white. We're pulling them 150-feet behind the boat at 2 to 2.5 mph (by GPS). We're going too fast for most crappie but pick one up once in a while.
Most of the fish other than the crappie in these pictures were caught this way - http://www.actionfishingtrips.com/pictures.htm. Two of the walleyes on the evening of 7/12 came on at the same time and one was two and a half pounds.
We're catching the crappie on Rosy Reds minnows under slip-floats from 11 to 15-feet deep.
Trolling is a great way to learn the "lay of the land" and find brushpiles if you have people with you that can watch the poles while you keep an eye on your graphs. The brushpiles that have been producing the best crappie for me the last couple days are some I recently found trolling.
Keep your drag set light so if you hang up in a brushpile you will have time to stop the boat, reel in your other lines and then back up to where your lure is hung up. It's a good way to get some fish in the box this time of year when the crappie bite can be light and short.
Once you have a waypoint saved on your GPS for the brushpile then go back on the other side of the brushpile and pull your bait loose. I use 15-pound Berkley Big Game so I don't loose very many crankbaits.
An easy way to know how much line you have out is to mark your line at the length you want with a permanent marker. I do this in my yard by hooking the bait on my gate and walking to my peach tree letting the line back-reel off the spool then mark the line and reel back up after letting the ink dry for a few seconds.
When you reel back up you can count the turns of the handle it takes to get the line back in so if you break off or get tangled up so bad you have to cut some line off you can back-reel the line out with the boat moving and count the turns of the handle until you get the right amount out and then mark your line again.
I run four lines at a time - one out each back corner of the boat and one out each side in Driftmaster rod holders. I use cheap (Walmart Shakespeare Tiger Series) 7-foot medium action poles and they work fine.