July 23, 2024
By Cory Schmidt
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Beyond fist-bumps and a revolving door of new best friends, the path of a crappie guide is occasionally paved with landmines and double-edged swords. On one side, you’re tasked with delivering limits of fillets, day after day. You’re constantly weighing the pros and cons of sharing your best spots and your favorite little off-the-beaten-path waterways with potentially unscrupulous souls. Every guide’s worst nightmare is arriving at their sweetest crappie spot bright and early, only to find yesterday’s clients already on the scene.
You’ve got other pitfalls to traverse, too, like clients who imply that boating a limit of 10 or more crappies per person isn’t enough to sate their appetites. “I thought we were having a good day, having already filled two crappie limits by 9:30 a.m.,” a friend recently told me. “But, soon as the last fish went in the livewell, they quickly forgot about crappies, demanding we then pursue additional limits of bluegills, perch, rock bass, and on and on. I’ve even guided some folks who refused to leave a tip or consider the day a success because we didn’t deliver complete limits of a second or third species. And that doesn’t even touch the idea of encouraging selective harvest—or asking folks to release 12- or 14-inch crappies in favor of 10s and 11s.”
Cautionary tales like these can certainly oblige any fledgling crappie guide to reconsider his or her choice of vocation. Then again, earning your guide’s license isn’t a prerequisite to employing one of panfishing’s finest tricks. And this one’s a gem. Two of the best crappie guides I know say it regularly yields assembly-line numbers of panfish, spring through summer and into early fall. I’d agree. But all of us would suggest the efficacy of the tactic comes with the weight of responsibility: It’s so good, you should use it with a mindset of harvesting selectively and responsibly.
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Flicker-Flash Factors For the rest of us, it’s the ultimate spinner-dinner crappie trick. In my estimation and that of guides Jesse Thalmann and Tom Neustrom, the addition of flash and vibration remain perhaps the finest collective way to deliver on a family fish fry. Flickering, flashing and audibly vibrating, a tiny spinner blade remains the most efficient means of filtering fish from expanses of shallow cover.
While spinners certainly vibrate and put out auditory signals detected via lateral line, I especially believe in the visual side of things. In terms of eye-to-body-size ratio, crappies rank right up there with bigeye tuna. Colossal crappie eyes provide clues to their reliance on visual feeding. Specifically, their oversized eyes allow for more effective low-light hunting, gathering more available light than their prey, yielding a distinct predatory advantage.
Guide Jesse Thalmann mows through vast cabbage fields with a specialized jig-spinner system that strains dozens of fish per day. This physiological advantage also suggests an augmented ability to detect subtle strobes of light, such as the momentary flicker of baitfish scales, perhaps as minnows attempt to sneak through a forest of aquatic plants undetected. Call it a twinkle or a strobe-like flash. You simply can’t deny the visual attraction created by mirror-like minnow scales or a metallic spinner blade.
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Once a remote flicker has registered in the brains of crappies, the hunt begins. Crappies like to inspect potential prey from up close—be it inch-long fry (including those of their own species) or a pinhead-sized zooplankton. But when they’re feeding competitively among a larger school, decisions to strike can be quick, potent, and precise. Crappies aren’t known to follow baits or prey for great distances. Rather, they nose up close, inspect, and quickly inhale the object.
Consider, too, that crappie eyes lie strategically near their crown, promoting “up” feeding, watching for food to pass a foot or more above their position. Crappies prefer hovering just below the upper branches of aquatic plants—a perfect ambush position. It’s not always necessary to keep your bait at the level of crappies, as they routinely rise two or more feet to capture prey.
Further, consider that crappies can detect very low-frequency vibrations such as movements caused by animals displacing water. In clear water, visual flash likely plays a larger role in feeding than sound. But in darker environs, crappies lean on sound and vibration, perhaps even more so than sight. Ultimately, the addition of a small spinner to any presentation is almost never a negative in terms of attracting or triggering crappies.
Blade Running I suppose it might seem like a contraction to divulge what might be the single most potent summer panfish system of all time. Certainly, it’s the most efficient means of canvasing water and sleuthing hidden crappie schools within vast expanses of shallow to middepth cover. But, if your intent is to fish this method only to fill the livewell, you’ll eventually face a conundrum of your own doing: Bites will quickly cease because you’ve already removed most of the available crappies.
There’s another side of the puzzle: It’s often the largest alpha crappies that bite first, using their size and dominance over subservient betas to afford them the first shots at newly arriving prey.
Think of it as plucking the ripest, most delicious cherries hidden among immense, leafy trees. The difference being, we ought to merely catch and admire the largest, most robust specimens before placing them back in the water. Thalmann, who operates Thalmann’s Guide Service, is perhaps the most popular panfish guide in Minnesota, and he consistently encourages the release of all trophy crappies while harvesting numerous 9- to 11-inchers.
“Right after crappies complete spring spawning, we follow the fish to the outer rims of dense cabbage (pondweed) plants,” he says. “In moderately clear lakes, we’re focusing on about 10 feet of water, where early on, we find bigger groups of crappies clustered in finite areas. In some of the darker-water lakes we fish, the cabbage edge forms in 6 to 9 feet. You just have to get out and run electronics across shallow to deep zones to determine the outer boundaries of plant growth. Once we’ve established the zone, it’s a simple matter of putting a spread of jig-spinners back there and straining water.”
Thalmann, who’s established a reputation for catching some of the biggest black crappies and sunfish in the Upper Midwest, consistently posts pictures of goliath panfish on his social media. He believes most of his biggest panfish are caught during the spring and summer seasons, and he releases all but the heaviest crappies from the small waters he haunts. “It’s simply the most potent fish-finding (and catching) system I’ve found, once crappies shift into their summer habitat, all the way through early fall.”
The strategy employs “little spinner jigs” dressed with 11/2- to 2-inch softbaits. For slow-trolling 6- to 10-foot zones, Thalmann runs 1/16- or 1/32-ounce Blakemore Road Runners or Northland Thumper Jigs . VMC’s Wingding Spin Jig is another worthy crappie-sized jig-spinner. Tiny size 00 to 1 Colorado blades shine in most waters, while a willowleaf bladed Road Runner provides more flash for dark water.
Thalmann’s favorite enticements include Bobby Garland’s Shad Swim’R, who’s subtle paddletail wags and kicks with ease. “The Shad Swim’R has a single joint in the bait halfway back, which makes it swim more freely,” he says. He also runs a custom-made double tail “frog” bait made by one of his clients, which resembles a Strike King Mr. Crappie Scizzor Shad . Crappies in his clear to stained water lakes have shown a preference for pink and white baits, as well as solid white. Purple has been a sleeper color, at times.
I’ve long used a similar program, preferring a 1/8-ounce Strike King Mr. Crappie Spin Baby Spinnerbait , which comes prerigged with a 2-inch grub. I think the tiny spinnerbait offers just a bit more snag-resistance and leaf-shedding talent than the jig spinner, and it frequently induces bites from slightly larger fish.
One of the coolest bait-related discoveries I made several years ago involved a 2-inch Z-Man ElaZtech GrubZ. A common dilemma when trolling most plastisol baits occurs with smaller panfish that relentlessly peck and dismember the tails. The ElaZtech GrubZ is an anomaly, truly a superior option for panfish because it’s not only remarkably soft—enabling beautiful tail action at any speed—but also durable to make one bait last for several days of fishing and dozens, if not hundreds of fish. Last May, I threaded one chartreuse-sparkle pattern GrubZ onto a Spin Baby Spinnerbait, affixing it with a drop of superglue, and it’s still there, ready for its second season of action—probably 150 crappies, sunfish, and bass and counting.
Thalmann and I share a slow-troll program that employs a bowmount trolling motor to activate the little blades at 1 to 1.3 mph, controlled with a handheld iPilot digital remote. Armed with 7-foot light-power, medium-fast action rods, anglers make long casts behind the boat, engage their spinning reels, and simply start moving forward. A light-power fast-action 7-foot 9-inch Elliott Rods ES79L-F transmits every minute tap or brush with cover, the extra length steering baits quickly left or right. Hall of Fame guide Tom Neustrom prefers 7-foot 6-inch St. Croix Avids (AVS76MLXF2) for spacing his spinner rigs between anglers.
While “inside” lines running closer to cover often produce more bites, it’s also not unusual for pods of crappies to suspend 10 to 20 feet off the edge. Spreading multiple baits and lines—perhaps running heavier, 1/8-ounce jig-spinners on the outside—is always a wise plan until a pattern emerges.
While 6-or 8-pound braid is a standard choice, wispy yet resilient 4-pound Sufix Nanobraid delivers at least a foot of extra running depth, joined to a 4-foot section of 4- or 6-pound-test fluorocarbon leader and finally, the lure. With a 1/16-ounce spinner jig or 1/8-ounce spinnerbait—which fishes lighter than its weight—and a long cast-length behind the boat, you’ll be down about 5 feet at 1.3 mph. With an 1/8-ounce Road Runner, you can achieve 11/2 to 2 feet of additional depth, key for deeper edges or deeper cover, such as brush.
Structural Schemes On a parallel path, Grand Rapids, Minnesota-based guide Tom Neustrom has commissioned a fine-tuned spinner-rig trolling program over several decades. “The biggest mistake summer crappie anglers make is to go into the cabbage and fish too deep below the fish,” says Neustrom, who fishes some of the top trophy crappie lakes in the North. “Crappies in cabbage usually hover high in the plant tops; they’re not hunkered down near bottom as folks assume.”
He starts most days by side imaging with his Humminbird Helix 12 , looking for vegetation and small clusters of fish. “One key is to dial down the scan range to 50 feet either side of the boat,” he says. “The narrower scan yields better screen details and lets you pick out individual fish hovering within the stalks. You can spot the different tufts of cabbage that hold fish and drop waypoints on them. I like to see at least two or three fish together before I consider dropping a waypoint, and once we’ve assembled a nice trolling stretch of icons, we start fishing.”
Rather than targeting sprawling shallow flats completely covered in greenery, Neustrom prefers flats with scattered, isolated clumps of cabbage. Lengthy stretches with isolated clumps provide more edges and ambush points for crappies.
Hall of Famer Tom Neustrom has pioneered a spinner rig crappie pattern that works almost anywhere crappies swim. “Moving 1.25 to 1.3 mph with a little spinner rig behind a 1/8- or 3/16-ounce bullet weight, I can keep the rig right over the top of the vegetation,” Neustrom says. “Speed is critical to crappies and the iPilot makes it easy to fine-tune. We run just 30 to 35 feet of line behind the boat, or in clear water up to 40, but that’s it. Every now and then, you pop the rig a little. Pop it off cabbage. Otherwise, we’re simply moving the rod right to left 2 to 3 feet. Mostly, you trigger fish on turns, speeding the outside rig and increasing spinner-blade vibration while slowing the inside rig. Crappies bite a spinner pretty aggressively; it’s a strong, almost bass-like bite.”
Prior to the summer season, Neustrom pre-ties about a hundred crappie rigs, each built with 36 to 40 inches of 14-pound-test Sufix Advance Fluorocarbon . Although fluorocarbon sinks, he believes the thicker-diameter leader elevates the rig above the veg, while also minimizing bite-offs from pike. Above a #1 VMC gold 9146 Aberdeen hook, he runs five beads and a metal clevis with a #3 gold Colorado blade, all tied to an ant-sized ball-bearing swivel at the opposite end. He impales a 2-inch chub or golden shiner by inserting the hook into the mouth, out the lower gill and then back through the stomach, leaving a slightly exposed point. He says this hooking arrangement aligns the minnow naturally and provides a measure of snag-resistance.
Though his baits diverge, Thalmann’s trolling program is strikingly similar. “Right after spawning, crappies group together in sizable schools on specific areas along the weededge,” he explains. “We’ll work the thickest patches of cabbage that lie close to some deeper 20- to 30-foot water, usually covering 100- to 200-yard stretches before finding a pod or two. What usually happens is we’ll see them on electronics or hit a double or a triple header. If we move through but fail to connect, we might slow down, speed up, or give the rods little wiggle-shake movements to trigger fish. And if it’s a big school, we might stop, spot-lock, and cast the same jigs until the school moves.
“Anglers who aren’t used to doing this often feel the tap-tap of a bite, but then fail to set the hook because they don’t detect the weight of a fish. Often, a crappie already has the bait in its jaw, but is simply swimming along with us. After the hook-set, an average-sized fish will plane right to the surface, while a big 12- to 14-incher stays down and bulldogs a lot more. We get a lot of bonus walleyes doing this, too.”
For Thalmann, it’s a bread-and-butter program that provides exceptional fishing action even through August and early September. “Later in summer, crappies can be really spread out in the cabbage. You might hit one fish here and then go another 20 yards before connecting a second time. But spinner trolling, to me, is still about the best method of all for finding crappies in a huge cornfield.
In-Fisherman Field Editor Cory Schmidt is an exceptional multispecies angler who lives in the panfish-rich Brainerd Lakes area of Minnesota, where he writes for all In-Fisherman publications. Guide contacts: Jesse Thalmann, thalmannsguideservice.com ; Tom Neustrom, mnfishingconnections.com .