Looking For A Crappie Crankbait Expert

[rlcarter]

looking for some info on how to troll for crappie with crankbaits, tried running some bandit 300's for a little while this morning about 12 to 15ft deep, saw alot of fish on the graph but didnt get any bits..i am just starting to try to crankbait and was wondering if there was a certain color that works good on stockton, what speed that you like to troll at and what kind of banks do you usually do the best on or if you just get way out in the middle ..any info would be a great help on learning a new tactic..also fish brush in the high point area and only wound up with 4 keepers but did catch alot of small fish..

good fishin to all

Rusty

[cwater]

I'm no expert, but this is my favorite summer time tactic. What works for me : Speed 1.5-2.0 mph. Sometimes they want it 1.5, sometimes 1.7, sometimes 2. Let the fish tell you. I fish with alot of natural shad colors, but sometimes they want a little chartreuse, sometimes pink....just varies. Solid pink is an excellent color, black and pink is a good color also. I try to fish near trees along drop offs and entries to creek channels, points are excellent also. I have also found that 75-100 feet of line out is the best. I don't have line counter reels so I basically just guess. Also line thickness is important to get your bait to the desired depth. I troll with 30 lb power pro, 8 lb thickness. I find I lose less baits this way. I believe the bandit depth curve is based on 10 lb mono. I also have better luck (atleast the lake I fish) on the main lake. Have tried in the creeks, but it doesn't seem as productive. Hope this helps.

[straw hat]

I am sure no expert. I am primarily a minnow man but I do carry a few crank baits with me for when I run out of minnows and the fishing is still hot. I cast from the bank using bandit 200s and my favorite colors are nearly identical to that of cwater. I fish primarily the tributaries (eg. CC) so I prefer a little chartreuse or green on my pink or shad colored cranks. I also like to fish them along or near creek channels.

[Big Oak]

what i normally do is find those suspended fish on the bluff ends like around cedar ridge and troll 20-40 feet of water. i like to troll with road runners tipped witha minnow and a storm hot-n-tot. the smaller one works best. it looks like it is too bnig for crappie but works everytime.

[Stoneroller]

are you just sitting in a spot and cranking or are you trolling? i'm going to share my summer secret for suspended crappie... Troll for them at about 1mph with a 10 foot diving crank less than 2.5 inches in length. set your drag very light so that it's almost pulling drag just from the lures action and make passes over areas you think they might be. I actually have really good luck trolling open water, I was catching 12-15 crappie 10 feet deep in 30-40 water last week with this technique. i think it was on a rapala dt thug lime colored if i remember correctly. beetle spins will work too, but you'll have to go a bit slower to get them down, or use a bigger jig head.

[Thunderin Gobbler]

Probably a dumb question, but how can you tell your speed when trolling? I'm pretty sure my graphs don't show mph on them? Do I just set the trolling motor at the lowest setting?

[dennis boatman]

1mph is slooooooooooooow. If you think you are going slow enough...go slower...totally agree with Stoneroller. Not sure it really matters what lure, just slow and consistent...

[rlcarter]

thank you for all your replies, looks like i need to get a few more colors and troll over deeper water..as for knowing my speed i put a gps on my graph and it tells me mph..i watch a video on midwest crappie about fishing crankbaits on sardis lake, he fished bandit crankbaits 200 and 300 series said to troll about 1.5 to 2.0. but you know how those fishing videos go they dont tell you everything that you need to know..

will this work all summer or do they quit at some point??

thanks again everyone.

Rusty

[streamer]

Bandit 300 has been the hot lure for me. I fished a local crappie tourney a week and a half back and won it on bandit 300's. It was for largest 15 fish, we ended with 9.8lbs and big fish of 14oz. We didn't have any huge slabs that day, but of the 15 we weighed in, we had an 11.5" average per fish. We only had 2 keepers in the well 2hrs before weigh in. Then we got into them and boated 20 keepers in an hour and a half. There were people in that tourney that caught more keepers than us, but big baits usually catch bigger fish. The hot colors were grenada shad, taco salad on that sunny day. Other good colors are solid pink, solid black, or black/pink. I've been trolling cranks exclusively the last month, with the exception of this last monday when the winds were to strong to make it to my main lake areas. I've been trolling in the mile long bridge area. Some days I find them in 20-35fow in big spawning coves, other days they are on mainlake points with small coves from 14-30fow. These are free ranging fish, so sometimes you have to try some different areas before you get into them. But once you a couple good schools, just keep turning around and running over them and you'll get some exitement. We had 6 rods out, and about every pass over the school you would have 3 fish on at once. I troll cranks alot on stockton, so shoot me a message if you'd like, and I'll try to point you in the right direction. However, I'm no expert in this area, I just got into this method a few years back.

[streamer]

Forgot to mention, 1.5-2.0 mph.