When you hit the water, are you sure crappies are going to hit chartreuse, or will it be white today? Can you get away with the aggressive 1/16-ounce jig, or will it have to be a 1/100-ounce jig tipped with a single maggot? Will they be on minnows or waxworms? Plastics or small leeches? Hardbaits or blade heads? Blades or small jig-and-plastic combos?

No worries, mate. Use both at the same time. Double rigs are nothing new, but the possible wrinkles are endless. And everytime we write about tandem rigging, people send us more ideas on how they’ve been doing it. Some of those ideas are pretty hot.

Tandem rigs were first designed long ago, to provide more bang for every buck. Spreader rigs were commonly deployed for all kinds of panfish way back when, because catching two or three at once was not only possible but expected during a hot bite. Nothing has changed in that regard. But most importantly, tandem rigging quickly dials in a fisherman to any preferences crappies may have for size, color, weight, aggressiveness, bait type, or style of plastic.

The simplest tandem rigs involve droppers. Just tie a short leader to a spoon, bladebait, crankbait, popper, or to the shank of a jig, dropping a lighter jig below. Almost as simple are tandems that employ some kind of knot that joins two lines, or any knot that leaves two tag ends. Jigs of the same weight or varying weights are tied to the tag ends.

Just those two simple options have so many variables, it would require an encyclopedia to illustrate all the possibilities with every type of bait, hair, plastic, and feather known to catch crappies. But a relatively brief parade of examples can bring the point home.

Pro Rigging Options

Spider-rigging provides a lot of impetus for creating and playing with tandem rigs. Spider-rigging, of course, is a trolling technique that employs anywhere from 4 to 15 rods. With two baits, tubes, or other options on each line, that’s 8 to 30 hooks or jigs. The sheer number of baits deployed gives pause, and the number of depths covered can be staggering. With 12 lines out, every foot of the water column could be covered from top to bottom in 24 feet of water.

Ronnie Capps and Steve Coleman, perhaps the two most successful crappie fishermen in tournament history, utilize one of the simplest and most effective tandem rigs for spider-rigging. They tie a 3-way swivel to their 8-pound mainline. From one of the remaining connections on the swivel they tie a 12-inch leader to an Aberdeen hook, and to the final connection, a 4-foot 6-pound dropper, which holds an egg sinker 18 inches down (wrapped onto the dropper). About a foot below that, on the end of the dropper, they tie on a hook or light jig (1/32- to 1/16-ounce). About a foot below the sinker, they tie on another hook or a tube jig.

Todd Huckabee, a multispecies guide in Oklahoma, likes to probe vertically into brushpiles and timber with tandem rigs for crappies. “It gives you a chance to try two similar or different presentations at different depths at the same time,” Huckabee says. He uses his own knot, a version of a loop knot, to put two jigs on the same line without having to tie lines together. “It’s very quick,” he says. “You’re back in the water within a minute, which is important around wood. I also secure the bottom jig to a loop knot, so both jigs are on loops. That allows them to pivot around wood and brush. When I have clients that insist on tying their own tandem rigs, I notice that they’re snagged up a lot more often than I am.”

Brian “Bro” Brohsdahl, a panfish guide in Minnesota, also created his own version of a dropper-loop for quicker, easier presentations to crappies both under the ice and in open water. He calls it the Bro Knot, and uses it on his “power dropper” rigs. It’s intended to place the bait, whether he’s using waxworms, minnows, or plastics, at the level he’s seeing fish on sonar. Similar to a drop-shot rig, a power dropper can be delivered immediately back into the strike zone in a hot bite, which he attacks with a minnow on a glow jig above a flashy rattling jig. In a tough bite, Bro goes with a bell sinker and tiny #16 to #18 caddis hooks (fly hooks) tipped with maggots on the dropper. The power dropper is designed for quick deliveries.

Tandems on Lures

Droppers can be attached to topwater lures and popper flies to pick off “lookers.” Make a noisy surface disturbance and active, shallow crappies will come for a look-see but won’t always bite. When crappies are deeper, droppers can be applied to crankbaits as well.

With surface lures and crankbaits, remove the rear hook and tie on a dropper. A surface lure can actually act as a double-duty lure-bobber. While it hunts bass or aggressive crappies on top, the dropper line can be up to 4 feet long, allowing an Aberdeen with a lip-hooked minnow or a light jig-plastic combo to drop slowly into the strike zone. Droppers on diving baits should be no longer than about 3 inches or tangles become problematic.

This is a good way to develop confidence in tiny plastics on 1/80- to 1/32-ounce jigs, as the flash and vibration of the crankbait draws fish to the jig. But remember to work slowly with constant pauses. Suspending baits are a big plus here, because the lure can be paused, allowing the hook or jig to settle a few inches below. Subtle twitches, slow pulls, and short, downward snaps of the rod tip can be deadly at that point when applying tandems.

Droppers on diving lures allow you to cover the top 8 to 10 feet of the water column with two very different presentations at the same time. For much the same reason, droppers on flylines are old news. In Ireland, it’s quite common to rig three flies on the same leader, especially when fishing still water for brown trout, using a series of line connections to create a tapered leader. Using surgeon’s knots or back-to-back uni-knots to connect two pieces of tippet, the angler simply leaves one 4- to 6-inch tag end off each knot to attach a fly. This also allows the angler to quickly determine which fly in the box is hottest at the moment, while fishing three different depths at the same time.

The same rigs work for crappies, with subsurface flies designed to catch them. Even simpler, however, is the popper dropper for crappies. Just tie a dropper to the shank of the hook on a popper or foam spider with a Trilene knot. Best to use bare hooks and plastics or sinking nymph patterns on the dropper. Jigs make casting more difficult and livebait tears too easily. For the same reason, leaders should be short—no more than 3 inches long.

Three flies on a leader should be a foot or more apart, and remember to put the heaviest fly on the end of the leader (bottom of the rig). Most nymph patterns that work for trout take crappies, but a tad more flash never hurts. During hot bites, it’s possible to hook three crappies at once. In fact, with most tandem rigs, multiple hookups become a common occurrence. But the main attraction of tandem rigging is the ability to present multiple baits or plastics, or combining those with hardbaits, to quickly zero in on precise depths and preferences.

Will it be marabou or plastic? Maggots or minnows? Tandems make such determinations quickly.