Dorado

Took my Gf crappie fishing on my tandem kayak. She made me proud.... even let me take a selfie or two Chartreuse/white under-spin paired with a 2” Gulp Alive! minnow (Emerald Shiner)

Favorite way to fish a Trick Worm. Springtime - Early Summer. Weightless, weedless on a Gama Offset G-Lock 4/0 hook. Candy Bug color with the tail dipped in chartreuse Spike-It. Fish it at night where they’re shallow oftentimes. Walk the bank and throw it parallel to shore. You will get a lot of bites on the initial fall. Then I’ll let it sit for about 5 seconds and slowly bring it back with a twitch, twitch, pause - repeat cadence - exactly like a fluke. I’ve had some explosive strikes at my feet using this technique. Exciting way to fish a plastic worm

5” Powerbait Maxscent The General Worm in GP/Watermelon or a 5” Senko in GP w/ Black Flk. Weightless wacky and my mindset immediately clicks to “I’m catching the biggest bass in this pond”

X2. This alone has deterred me from being a jig fisherman. I only fish with jigs in bodies of water that I know for a fact have sandy or muddy bottoms. I need to start taking chances more and fish them in rocky areas this year. Pay to play

Birthday is coming up in a couple months and I have my eye on this unit for my kayak. Any testimonials/reviews? Thanks in advance

If you really want to see how much green bass like tubes, try it sight fishing on beds this spawn. Trust me I’ve used a 3.5” Gitzit Fat tube in Brown Craw/S&P (favorite tube color) for the past four years bed fishing and it’s highly effective! White tubes (more visible) are popular too during this time in AZ so anglers can see their tubes getting picked up easier

I’m a grub fanatic. I like using an 1/8 oz Roadrunner 2.0 Pro (bigger hook, willow blade and keeper on the jig head). Partial to Chartreuse with a white 3” Zoom grub from Wal-Mart. It’s a mainstay in my panic box. I swim these subsurface where I know threadfin Shad are the main forage Also would also recommend picking up some 3” Kalin’s lunker grub in Ron’s craw for jigging on the bottom or 3” Berkley Powergrubs in Pumpkinseed to imitate crawdads in highly pressured waters. Such a classic multi-species soft plastic. if you night fish, a sleeper pattern for me is fishing a 3” Zoom Fat Albert grub in Junebug on a darter head. Check out Waynesworld’s website, a famous SW guide for Lake Powell. He’s a grub master and has wrote some inspiring articles about the power of jigging grubs and their versatility. Like someone mentioned previously, the grub was my “Ned rig” before the revolution began

Good response. I’ve never fished with a glass rod, but have read that they can be heavy and insensitive. Doesn’t seem like it with that particular model right?

This year, I want to start throwing deep diving cranks, mostly dredgers, 6XD, DT 16. I won’t get into the 10XD space. There’s graphite, composite, and grass. It’s a lot to soak in and any testimonials and guidance would be greatly appreciated!

First bass of 2020. 168 s-waver (bone white) Ambitious little guy

On BR, use the search tool and type in the word “Crappie”. You will find a ton of useful info and tips. Otherwise, ask away and someone will chime in. There are a lot of talented Crappie anglers on this forum

Great post! I have a couple bags of swim senkos that I’ve never tried and this inspired me to tie one on this year. Curious why you use a Keitech trailer upside down on your chatterbaits? Different action?

Power fishing and drop shot plastics consisted of my last purchase of 2019. I think these are going to put some work next year.....

Could the pre-spawn come any sooner??

Vertical jigging: -Shallow Mode -Auto Depth -Auto Sensitivity (sometimes I find this too sensitive as it picks up too much white noise. I find my self calibrating this more with experience) -Surface Clarity on Low -Ping Speed on Fast -Downscan on 800khz (Must) -High Chirp for the narrowest cone. When I’m strolling and looking for schools of baitfish I’ll switch to Mid Chirp to widen the cone to broaden my scan and it transmits more distinct fish arches too -Blue grad is what gives me the best color contrast -Brightness should be mentioned since it took me awhile to snap out of it and adjust accordingly. Made it a lot easier depending on the weather -Turn off the fish identifier. It’s deceiving. Learn to trust your sonar When you’re at home, play around with the “Demo” mode and that will help understand all of the nuances with your settings. Hope this helps! This is based off memory so let me know if I missed anything

Both of those were my honorable mentions

@ryanerb thanks brother. Started the morning strolling small paddle tails and Lake Fork Live Baby Shads over open water in the deepest part of the Lake. Deepest part is only 19’ and found schools and schools of Shad, but no signs of active gamefish. I fished hard for a couple hours mixing colors and trying various depths. I ate a quick lunch and regrouped. I switched to my confidence bait. I altered my strategy and tossed buoys on transition points that had the sharpest declines. The money spot happen to have some submerged bushes at the base (sonar pic) of these drop offs. For example, it would be flat at 7’ then abruptly drop to 15-17’. That’s where I started seeing the grouped crappies..... not the Christmas tree shapes I typically find in larger reservoirs, but downscanning images gave me enough clues that they were more than likely huddled panfish vertically jigging got the school fired up after I switched from natural colors to the bold, bright colors with stronger contrast since the water was very stained I tried double jigs both tied with loop knots for the first time ever crappie fishing. I don’t ever want to go back to another knot. Having two jigs on one line gave me more confidence because I could offer more options and switching colors was a breeze until I figured out the puzzle. The loop knots keep the jigs perfectly horizontal resulting in flawless hook sets in the upper mouth. Didn’t miss a single fish and on 4# test on a light action, fast tip rod they sure were fun! The most difficult part was marking sure my presentation was just over the structure and I just had to visualize. I studied the sonar unit and would yo yo to gauge where my jig was in relation to the bushes to mark my depth. High CHIRP and higher sensitivity made that video game fishing easier to interpret. 1/8 oz jigs gives me more accuracy to get my jigs down faster and stay in the strike zone too. I only use 1/16 and 1/32 oz jigs on slip bobbers especially during the spring with crappie tubes and Gulp Alive minnows. Last thing, those BG Baby Shads are incredible! Those puppies have caught all of my large crappies and prove to be consistent every season. Perfect profile and that tapered tail quivers in such a tantalizing way that drives the slabs crazy! Sorry for the novel. I’m getting addicted to crappie fishing ever since I moved to AZ. They are too much fun!

Caught this catfish off a crappie jig. Landed my PB crappie from my kayak too (details on

More pics

Took the kayak out today and landed 11 slabs. Vertical jigging with double 1/8 oz chartreuse jigs (loop knots) in 17 ft of water. Bobby Garland Baby Shads were the ticket (confidence bait). Pearl Chartreuse caught the #’s but Blue Thunder landed the two largest - including my new PB!!!

4” Berkley Maxscent The General Worm (GP/Watermelon) weightless, wacky-rigged

I use 12# Power Pro braid. 8# P-Line Fluorocarbon or whatever extra I have laying around somewhere. I don’t like using expensive line for leader personally. What @J Francho said about using a heavy drop shot weight to act as an anchor was spot on! Totally agree.

You beat me to it!

Livetarget squarebill Baitball Series has been a huge hit for me for the past couple years. It shines prespawn and late fall for my waters.