Suspender floating often turns a tough outing into a relative success. It means a few panfish when you would have caught none, and maybe few more fish when you would have caught some. Rarely, though, does it mean lots more fish when you’re already catching lots of fish. When the fish are cracking, you should be cracking them with a different technique.

Suspender floating requires a float coupled with a bait and line shotted (weighted with lead shot) so the rig is barely heavier than neutrally buoyant. Drop the bait and shot down the hole. As it settles, set the float daintily on the surface. Water tension on the surface of the float keeps it from sinking. Move the float, however, and water covers the surface of the float so that it slowly begins to sink, along with the bait suspended below it. Shotted properly it may take a minute for your float to sink from the surface to the bottom of your hole, at least in Minnesota where the ice can be 3 feet thick, right now.

That’s the idea. Your bait’s sinking slowly, almost suspended in the water column. Any movement of your rod tip adds an enticement to the bait that can’t be duplicated any other time. Say you’re using an ultralight graphite rod, 1- or 2-pound-test line, and a #12 teardrop packed with two maggots. Coupled with a matching reel you have a deadly system for any panfish species, although most fishermen would specifically choose this system for bluegills.

Barely tip (a tip is less than a twitch) your rod tip and the bait explodes momentarily upward before slowing suddenly, stopping, then ever-so-gradually sinking again—like a world-class change-up in professional baseball. You expect fastball, see the fastball motion, but suddenly find a piece of styrofoam floating toward you at half speed.

There’s no other way you can make this movement in fishing. Fish haven’t seen it before, so even when fish have been fished over for several months, some of them usually respond.

That’s only one of many deadly moves for picky panfish. Barely circle your rod tip a time or two and stop. Let the bait sink an inch and repeat the circles. Or twitch, twitch, twitch your tip. It’s the closest you can come to imitating a jumbo grass shrimp or some other jolly crustacean that panfish love to eat.

Tackle Tips

The key to this system is achieving near-neutral buoyancy. You need floats and a rod-and-reel system or minnow lines and hooks and lures. Split shot determine success when it’s time to tune a rig toward neutral buoyancy. The BB shot from Water Gremlin are one option, but it helps to have more micro-sized shot on hand.

The Thill Shot from Lindy Legendary Fishing Tackle (lindyfishingtackle.com) is perhaps the most easily available option for smaller shot. Meanwhile, Wacker Baits (wackerbaits.com) offers Kwik Change Pop Up Weights. Specialty shops like Thorne Brothers (thornebros.com) and Erie Outfitters (440/949-8934) also offer shot and steelhead floats. The English company Drennan offers many shot options, too. Search the web for Drennan to find a tackle shop that sells the shot in North America. They also offer an extensive line of sensitive floats, as does Thill.

If you’re inside a shack and can use a slipfloat rig coupled with a rod-and-reel system, begin weight-tuning by adding shot 18 inches above your lure. Add enough shot to achieve almost-neutral buoyancy. Fine-tune by adding micro shot 6 inches above your lure. Have the lightest shot nearest the bait—to prevent tangling when you jig, and so fish don’t feel the weight when they take the bait.

Minnow Lining

Crappies and perch may be caught using small lures tipped with maggots. A particularly overlooked option is a plain (no dressing) leadhead jig that should weigh 1/16 ounce or less. Pack the jig with maggots. I don’t know what it looks like to fish, but it works every place I’ve been, from Ohio to the Dakotas to Canada.

At times, however, crappies and perch prefer a minnow presentation. Use what I term a “minnow line.” It should consist of about 27-pound-test black Dacron line or a braided superline like Spiderwire Stealth testing about 30 pounds. You’ll be hand-over-handing this rig, and the Dacron is essential to do this quickly and efficiently. Trying this with monofilament is a joke, yet most fishermen fear that Dacron spooks fish. Sure, if you tie it directly to your bait.

Tie your own stop knot and slide it up a tad. Add a small bead and slip a Carlyle float on the dacron. Tie about a 3-foot section of 4-pound-test clear or gray monofilament on the swivel at the end of the dacron to serve as your leader.

The minnow can be on a plain hook, though I usually prefer to anchor the minnow with a wide-gapped ice fly. The teardrop adds attracting color to the minnow, and more importantly, makes it difficult for the minnow to swim and therefore easy for fish to catch.

File most of the barbs from your hooks: this makes minnow-hooking and hook-setting easier. Barbs aren’t necessary to land fish, use only enough barb to hold the minnow on.

Hold the minnow in your hand and facing away from you. Barely nick the hook under its dorsal fin, with the hook pointing away from you toward its head, which allows the minnow to swim seductively and increases your hooking percentage immensely.

Don’t hesitate to bend hooks out 10 degrees or so to facilitate hooking the bait. It probably helps hook more crappies and perch, too.

Perch usually prefer the bait within 3 feet of bottom; crappies may be anywhere in a column of water. Say crappies are coming through 5 to 10 feet off bottom in 30 feet of water.

One approach would be to set your float so the bait is suspended 8 feet above the bottom when the float’s on the surface. This lets you fish the float from the surface down 3 feet, with your bait from 5 to 8 feet a above bottom.

Cover more water by including a lift 2 to 3 feet above the water. After lifting (an attracting maneuver), drop the float slowly as you follow it down to the surface of the water with your rod tip. When a crappie takes, the sinking line hesitates. The addition of the lift means you can cover 5 to 6 feet of water instead of about 3.

Suspender floating is, by the way, as applicable to larger predators as it is to panfish.