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The problem with that theory is that not all ultralight rods are buggy whips. I have quite a few ultralight rods that have a very fast action and a good bit of backbone. And they're delightful for their intended purpose and for their intended target.

I replied to the other thread requesting help for Crappie rods too and my response will be the same here. If you're new to it, you're going to learn that there are tons of different techniques and that people prefer different types of rods for each of those techniques, so the responses that you're likely to receive will be from guys offering the rods/styles that they like for the style of fishing that they do, which may or may not be relevant to what you want to do. What I do typically when fishing for Crappie is to cast 1/32-1/16 ounce jigs (1/24th the most frequently), sometimes in open water, sometimes near or on/in brushpiles, sometimes shooting under docks, etc.. The rod that I've been using which I really like is a 6.5' Denali Pryme UL/F rod. I wanted a bit more length, so I also ordered the Denali Pryme 6'9" UL/MF rod, but didn't realize until after I received it that I had ordered MF and not a Fast action, which I definitely prefer (I prefer the fast action). Even so, either one of those two rods have been productive and enjoyable for me, but again, I'm not sure whether you'll do the same sort of fishing that I do or not.

There's just an awful lot of ground in "all around panfish rod". Not to be captain obvious, but it really depends a lot on what sorts of fishing you'll do. Fishing mostly for small panfish? Fishing for giant panfish (I'm really into REALLY big panfish and really couldn't care less about the small or normal sized ones)? Fishing shallow water? Deep? From a boat or on shore? All live bait? Artificials or some live and some plastic? Crankbaits, jigs? Livescope? Anchored up, trolling, casting? Shooting docks, fishing brush? There's just a LOT of different ways to target panfish and you'll find recommendations for 5 foot rods or 12 footers, super ultralight action or medium action, slow tapers or very fast tapers, etc. etc.. Personally I'm a big fan of very fast action, 6.5-7 foot UL rods for really big panfish, often in deep water, always on small plastics and always casting to them typically with 4 pound test mono, but occasionally with 6 or 8 pound braid, without the benefit of forward-facing sonar, but those rods may or may not suit you well depending on how you'd use them.

I've been searching for years for a full collection of "The Fishin' Hole with Jerry McKinnis". I loved those shows and would gladly binge watch the entire series if anyone sold them as a DVD collection or streamed them to a particular service. Anyone?

I was Crappie fishing this spring and hooked what ended up being a 10.25" Crappie on an UL rig. At some point, it just stopped coming in, then my drag started going and the line slowly started tracking towards the bottom in 15 feet of water. I was able to slowly bring it up to the surface where I saw an enormous Largemouth (at least by my standards, never having caught one over about 7 pounds) which had the Crappie sideways and completely inside its mouth. I estimated the fish at 11-12 pounds and I really think my estimate is/was probably quite accurate because I got a really good look at it. The bass really wasn't fighting much either, just being dragged slowly towards my boat and my waiting landing net. He got literally a foot or two from the net as I was sliding him in headfirst before he coughed up the Crappie and sunk into the depths. I would have told the truth after I photographed and released the bass (that I didn't catch him "fair and square"), but I surely would love to have gotten photos and a weight on him, or alternately a video of the episode.

I don't recall exact weights and while I don't have photos (not here, I'm at the winter residence and using my laptop), my top 5 smallies were between the low 6 pound range and 6.75 pounds, probably 31-32 pounds total. I've been blessed to fish a lot of really great fisheries and I'm close to Lake Erie, though I typically don't fish it often at all (none of my top 5 came from Erie). Haven't caught a 7 pounder yet, though I've seen some that were really 7 pound'ish that got off near the boat and I had a buddy take a 7 pound 4 ouncer with me a few years back.

Holy smokes. You can never really tell with a photo because of perspective, but that looks like a total slob. I read yesterday that someone caught a 4.33 pounder the other day on Lake Chautauqua in NY (where I've been known to fish, especially for walleye). By way of an update, I think I'm now up to 33 Crappie over 14" this calendar year, which for me is remarkable because until this year I had only caught a handful that size in my entire life. I'm just fishing a lake that doesn't have a ton of Crappie but that DOES have some really big ones.

I do the same thing. I've been doing a lot of Crappie fishing this winter/spring and they can be on very distinct spots and often recognizable spots (like bridges). I always just turn around so that the background is just water or homes very far away on the opposite bank. I don't worry too much about location, but with social media and a fair percentage of anglers being new/inexperienced, they DO try to find your spots and take advantage.

Nice, it's certainly been good for numbers of late. I'm still taking some big Crappie too. I've got two brothers coming to fish for a few days this week, then a buddy for a couple of days the week after that, so we'll definitely be out pursuing the bass some.

I'm sorry to hear about your wife and hope that she's OK. Check Youtube for some information/videos about Tugaloo (I think the locals also call it Bull Sluice Lake if I'm not mistaken). I think it has a pretty good reputation and it's definitely somewhere that you'd feel comfortable with a kayak I think. I occasionally fish from a kayak on Keowee because my wife likes to take the yaks out at times and I can score family points while still getting some fishing in that way, but it's a much bigger lake and in the summertime, the last thing I'd do there would be to try to use, let alone to fish from a kayak.

I don't recall if I told this story on this thread or not and I'm too lazy to read back through it. I was Crappie fishing about a month ago and hooked a 10+" Crappie. Line got tight and stopped moving and I eventually brought whatever was on there to the surface. It was an ENORMOUS Largemouth that had swallowed the Crappie whole. Got him right to the net and he spit the Crappie out before I could lead him in. 11 or 12 pounder I believe and probably 26" long or so? Really a giant, but like I said, a Spot at 24" is a legit trophy. Hope you find him again. I've lost my two largest Spots on that lake, but both were likely in the 20-21" range.

Yeah, those cold nights really slow things down. I had a buddy that wanted to fish the morning after one of those cold nights in the last week or so and I suggested that he wait until 11AM. He couldn't/wouldn't do so and fishing was in fact slow for the first hour or so, but it picked up that day as well. Wow, a 24" spot would be an absolute monster, but I saw a photo of an 8 pounder taken on the lake to the north a week or two ago. Geez, what a slob. I'm up north right now, but will be back in a few days and have company coming next week to fish and the timing should be good for some really great bass fishing I would hope.

Yeah, I haven't fished it personally, but from what I know and what I've heard, the Saluda is a good choice for multiple species. Greenville is also reasonably close to the French Broad up in North Carolina. Again, I'm new to the area myself and haven't fished them personally, but I think there are also several smallish lakes near Greenville/Spartanburg that are supposed to be top-notch for bass and for crappie and other species. Quite a bit west of Greenville, but Lake Tugaloo is another lake that gets fished by kayak a lot and that has a really good reputation for some big fish and some somewhat unusual species for this area (walleye, yellow perch, etc.).

Hey wrat, not sure if you've been out, but the pre-spawn fishing has really picked up. I'm still mostly fishing for Crappie, but went out with a friend last week for 3 or 4 hours and we caught the Spots really well. We didn't catch any slobs, but a fair number in the 17-18" range. Then I went kayaking with my wife last evening and fished only for 30-40 minutes and still caught a few. Most on/near the docks in what I'd call deeper water, but I see fishing reports from guys who are fishing shallow too. Good time to be on the lake if you're able. I'm going with another friend tomorrow morning, but again, will likely fish for Crappie until or unless they tell me that they aren't interested, at which point we'll do some bass fishing.

No, I don't, but I do have several UL rods that are true fast actions, one of them being a Denali Pryme and the other being a Cabela's Tourney Trail rod. I have several others that are likely MF action as well.

This would be my opinion and advice as well. I fish UL rods a LOT and catch some very big Spotted bass and Smallmouth on them (not to mention lots of other assorted fish). I think there's a lot more than just the power of the rod to consider though. A very fast action UL rod fishes a hell of a lot different than a moderate action rod and would probably have more "power" than even a moderate action L rod. Lots of good choices out there. I have at least 7 or 8 UL rods and at least 5 or 6 ML rods, but I think I only have 1 or 2 L action rods, I just don't find that I need them.

I suppose that I should mention that I've broken my personal best black crappie again this spring. This one wasn't as long, but it was just a tiny bit heavier at 2.9 lb. 16.25 inches long versus 17 inches for the previous PR. I've been having a really remarkable spring for big ones and have now caught at least 22 crappie that surpassed 14 inches in just this calendar year (9 of those surpassed 15 inches, 3 surpassed 16 inches and one made 17" exactly). On the morning that I took the 2.9 pounder, I also caught another 2.5 pounder as well. Just one big one after another this winter and spring and I've been having so much fun with them. The picture of this one doesn't do it any justice either. Until this year, I never would have imagined catching even these 2.5-3 pound fish that I've been catching this year, but now I keep adjusting my goals and I feel that it's just a matter of time until I catch an honest 3 pounder and then, who knows........

I still haven't bass fished much on Keowee yet this year, but the fishing for big Crappie remains good and I did get a couple of decent bass today (one Spot and one Largemouth).

Billy Westmoreland and Al Lindner have been mentioned a lot and they were both influential to some degree with me as a kid or a young adult. Jerry McKinnis, unless I'm mistaken, has only been mentioned one time in this thread and he was BY FAR the biggest influence in my life from the standpoint of fishing and it's not close. He went to great fisheries, loved to fish for many of the same species I fished for, fished with light line and ultralight rigs a lot and he was a genuinely decent man. Like I said, for me not even close and I'd kill to get DVD copies of all of his shows. You can find some online, but not anywhere near all of them and for the life of me I don't know why his family or BASS, ESPN or whoever owns those shows doesn't sell them as a package. Honorable mention is Lefty Kreh, but it's only been the last few years (since retirement) that I'd really call myself a very serious fly fisherman. I did take a quick casting lesson from Lefty once and have my photo with him here in the house. Great guy.

I'm surprised by how many trips some of you were able to get or are able to get routinely from year to year. I have friends and family that suggest that I fish more than anyone they know and I still don't get out nearly as often as some of you folks. Last year I definitely got out 50 times, probably got out 60 and may have gotten out 70 times, but that includes times that I only fished for an hour, times that I fished a stream for trout, trips in the boat, etc. etc.. And the only reason that I now fish 50-70 times per year (or maybe a bit more) is because I'm recently retired.

Ha! My sonar isn't behaving right either and I just walked through the troubleshooting with a Lowrance tech. He discovered that the transducer is shot and I ordered a new one, so if I go, I'll be without sonar on the console as well (mine works some, but not well at all and I certainly couldn't find deep channels, deep fish, etc. etc.). I thought about going for Crappie this afternoon myself, but decided I'd forego that and get some other stuff done. Good luck. You can always fish the bank on this lake with some success even without sonar. My transducer is on the way and I'm hopeful I'll have it hooked up and working very quickly on Monday or Tuesday and I plan to spend some time fishing for Crappie this week if the weather permits.

That's sort of how I feel as well. There are places I can go to catch a bunch of them and I don't really pursue them to eat on this lake because you'd get frustrated easily, but if you were a person who was happy with far fewer fish in exchange for a few slobs, this place works fine.

I'm doing my best to figure out the Crappie fishing on my new home lake. The locals here ALL go somewhere else because there are very productive Crappie lakes nearby and this lake is extremely unreliable and tough to catch them on, but there are some big ones here. This is the 5th that I've taken in the last 2 weeks that I'd call a "big 'un".

Interesting. I saw a lot of guys, but didn't see anyone land any fish, though I'm sure they probably did fine. We caught a couple of bass and one Crappie in just a couple of hours, but I was having trouble with my sonar, so didn't really fish much at all. We did make a handful of casts in one spot where we each caught a nice Spot, I lost one and we marked a bunch in a 5 minute period, so had it not been for my electronics woes, we may have been able to hang around in that area and catch a bunch.

I'm not leaving until noon'ish. I'm actually pretty easy to find on the lake. I'm typically near the mid-lake, though I'll occasionally move around or even launch down south, but I'm in an 18' grey Smokercraft with 115 Yamaha. Not a ton of multi-species rigs on the lake, so I stick out some. Good luck.