Hal Barber, inventor of the Hal Fly, taught me the basics of crappie trolling close to 20 years ago, and his tactics still work just as well as ever. Hal said that fish tend to bite best on downwind legs, particularly on days when winds have been strong and consistent for an extended period. It’s possible that the wind creates a slight current, which causes the fish to face into it.

To get the drop on a hard-fighting winter spec, you need to enter the grassy strike zone where they spawn.

In any case, trolling for specks works best if you choose one of two speeds, slow...or slower. Walking speed is plenty fast enough. Specks are not given to running down fast-moving baits, and also the slow speed assures that your offering stays deep, down where the fish are likely to be when the water is chilly.

Most outboards will not run slowly enough for speck trolling; you’ll probably need to troll with the electric motor, set at its lowest speed—just enough to maintain steerage. Stern mount trollers work a lot better for this than bow mounts; steering is tough with the wind behind you with a bow-mount. On windy days, you don’t even need the troller except for steerage, advises John Evertsen—just let the wind slide you along, and when you get to the bottom of a productive area, start the outboard and motor wide around the school, back to the upwind side for another drift. (Don’t have an electric motor? Take a tip from northern walleye trollers and use the outboard for “back-trolling” which is backing up as you troll. The boat moves much slower, and you catch more crappies—though the motor noise can be a factor if the fish are at depths of less than 10 feet.)

Some experts spread their baits as much as possible, just as if they were trolling for marlin in blue water. They use 8-foot fly rods to reach out to each side of the boat, then add a couple of shorter rods at the transom corners, and maybe even one or two more lines straight behind the outboard. This gives them a better shot at pulling the lures through the school of fish. Hal Barber also liked the long rods because their soft tips were less likely to tear the hook out of a speck’s mouth.

For those who hate trolling, once you locate a school, you can anchor and work on them by drifting minnows to them, casting jigs or even delivering a sinking shrimp or minnow fly on a sinktip 6-weight fly rig. When the fish are tightly schooled, you can actually catch more this way than trolling, but as soon as the bite stops on a school, it’s time to start trolling and find a more cooperative pod of fish.

Offshore speck trolling stays good until the fish head to the shallows to spawn. In a warm winter, this might be the first strong moon period in February, sometimes even in late January. If it’s exceptionally cold, the offshore action may hold on until the first of March—after that, it’s time to head for the bullrushes to load up on a speck dinner.

Finding specks along a shoreline is often a matter of looking for the crowds. Fish stack up, and so do fishermen, and there’s usually room for all. Basically, specks spawn in one to five feet of water over fairly hard bottom with plenty of weedy cover. Canepoled minnows or jigs, dropped into the tiny weed pockets, will catch all you want once you locate the spawning aggregations. F

Top 10 Lakes

Just about every lake in Florida has plenty of specks, but the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission each year compiles a list of the most productive larger waters that attract lots of anglers. Here’s the lineup for this year:

Lake Marian, 5,739 acres east of Haines City

Lake Trafford, 1,500 acres southeast of Fort Myers

Lake Monroe, 9,400 acres near Sanford

Lake Talquin, 8,800 acres west of Tallahassee

Lake Okeechobee, 650 square miles! You know where this one is.

Tenoroc, 13 managed lakes east of Lakeland

Lake Woodruff, 2,200 acres near DeLeon Springs

Lake Istokpoga, 28,000 acres near Sebring

Lake Kissimmee, 35,000 acres east of Lake Wales

Lake Jessup, 10,000 acres in Seminole County.

Other lakes recommended by FWC biologists include Lake Harris, Weir, Marion (the one in Polk County), George, Griffin and Beauclair. I’d add a few personal favorites to that—Crescent as mentioned above, East Toho and Toho—all very productive and holding some 2-pound slabs that ought to be ready to bite just about now.

FS