Thread: Smaller Lakes

I got started crappie fishing in small lakes (up to 200 acres) in Georgia with a friend who like to troll one pole with a jig using 4# test line. I had to buy stuff for this, I was a bass fisherman. We caught hundreds of crappie doing this with a trolling motor and a HB flasher to find the channels and drop offs. The crappie tend to overpopulate in small lakes if no one fishes for them and that was our case. We kept most all we caught to try to balance the numbers but the crappie were faster than us.
We would throw out the jigs as far as we could cast a 1/32 oz. jig and follow the channel or creek bed in the lake going as slow as we could with the TM. If we got a couple of hits, we would turn around and come back through in the same direction. Sometime we could cast to them if we got several hits and manage to catch a doze or so just casting and letting the jig sink near bottom and reel in 4 times slower than you thought you should. My hardest problem to overcome from years of bass fishing was reeling too fast. With crappie it is about impossible to reel too slow. And you have to watch your line when reeling because they will come up to it, take it in and spit it out and all you will see if a slight bow in the line. I finally learned to strike when you don't feel anything, because that is when the crappie is swimming with the jig in his mouth.