While on a small vacation over the holiday weekend, I had a chance to take my nephew (10 yrs ) crappie fishing, for his first time. Our fish are really on right now stacked up at the dam, as most lakes are right now. I really enjoyed watching him catch some of these big crappies. We limited out 4 out of 5 days (50) It was a trip of a lifetime for him. I have been crappie fishing 40 out of my 45 years, growing up on the lake. I sold all my rigs and bought a 28' barge that Ihave rigged for fishing. My point is while I was fishing all last week I took time to notice all of the methods being used to take these deep water crappie. As most of you know there are all kinds of boats with all kinds of people in them. Some were trolling with their trolling motors, some were drifting, some were anchored, some had thrown out drift socks. Some were using minnows, some had double rigs, some had jigs, some jigs and mionnows combo. And my self, we use about a 200' anchor rope, and pull and release up and down the timber in the channels. Some had 10 poles out, some were 202 s to numerous 12 foot graphite crappie rods.
Other than being on top of numbers as wew were, several boats worked hard with their trolling motors with 2 each 12' graphite crappie rods and stayed in the timber lines. They were just deadly.
But the most deadly of them all was a guy in an old john boat that had 3 guys with him. He threw out a drift sock, and set 6 rods out with a red and white jigs on the end of the line and a minnow 12" above it. He was catching 15 - 20 in about a 1000 yard run. all in all, it was a very informative week, and I really got a kick out of all of the styles beig used. :p