Trolling for Crappie: Lures, Tactics and More for Florida Specks

Some people call it “strolling” because it’s too slow to be called “trolling”.

But easing along very slowly prospecting for crappies is the very best way to find them when they are anywhere but on the banks spawning in late winter and early spring. The rest of the year, they’re most often schooled offshore, and finding them requires you to keep moving until you connect.

Trolling speeds lower than walking speed—3 miles per hour—are usually most successful for finding crappies. Some anglers whisper along at less than 1 mph, with their trolling motor set on the lowest possible speed. While “specks,” as some Old Florida folks still call them, can move fast on occasion when they attack a shad school, they generally prefer small, slow baits that can be sucked in at leisure as the offering passes in front of their face.

Some days, no power at all is required—just drifting with the wind does it, and if the wind is too strong you have to slow things down, perhaps by working slowly upwind on the trolling motor or by dragging a trolling drogue from the boat.

Where to Find Crappies

While spawners are nearly always on the banks, the rest of the year crappies are most often well offshore, and usually close to a school of shad or minnows. They often hang on channel edges in impounded lakes, and around the deeper parts of natural lakes.

On lakes with big mayfly hatches, they sometimes school around shoreline areas where the mayflies emerge and gulp them down right beside the panfish and bass that also home in on the free food.

Sonar makes finding the fish much easier. Work along channel edges and around submerged trees or brush, or simply look for the large bright balls of shad that show up on screen, and concentrate your trolling in these areas.

You can also see pods of crappie and even individual fish on good sonars, so this makes things easy. The crappies (or bass) will usually be below the bait, maybe downslope on a drop. Pull (or push) your crappie lures through them a few feet above the dots and crank up whatever latches on.

Best Crappie Lures

Tiny jigs probably account for more crappies than all other lures combined. Anything from 1/64 ounce up to 3/16 might be a crappie jig, with those in the 1/32-to-1/8 ounce range the favorites for most Florida anglers. The lures are typically 1 to 2 inches long, and many anglers go with soft plastic swimmer or tube tails. Z-Man StingerZ, Bobby Garland, Strike King Mr. Crappie are among many effective tails. The Hal Fly, invented by Hal Barber, sort of the father of crappie trolling, is still as good as ever. Popular crappie colors include white, pearl, chartreuse and pink. Have a few darker colors ready, as well; dark green and black are sometimes what they want.

Also, more weight than might be thought of as designated crappie jigs might be needed on days when wind makes a slow drift impossible. Sometimes an added weight up to an ounce above the jig will be needed to keep it in the strike zone.

Crankbaits about 2 inches long also get ‘em, but choose models that wobble when trolled slowly. The Strike King Slab Hammer and Bandit 300 are among the best.

Casting for Crappie

Once you locate an active school of crappie by trolling, you might want to ease up within casting range, put the troller on spot-lock and cast to them. Forward scan sonar makes this a no-brainer, but you can catch plenty by just triangulating where the school is holding and dropping your jig down among them.

Crappie “jigging” is sort of a misnomer, compared to jigging for bass. Basically many pros simply shake or vibrate the rod—the idea is to make the lure shiver and twitch without moving much up, down or sideways. Present the lure just above the fish, and they’ll come up and get it.

The bite is usually light—maybe just a slackening of the line, or the line jumping sideways. Make a gentle hook set and crank them up.

Best Crappie Tackle

Some anglers prefer to “push” their lures from the bow rather than tow them from the transom on the theory that the baits pass over the fish before the boat does, so they’re more likely to bite. This tactic requires very long crappie poles, typically 10 to 16 feet, put out on a spider rig rod holder that will allow pushing four lures from the bow.

For trolling from the back of your boat, again the longer rods will allow a greater spread, though if you’re a casual crappie angler you can catch plenty by putting out some crappie lures on your standard medium-light 7-foot spinning rod.

The right line is important with these small jigs. Monofilament line stouter than 8-pound test takes away much of the action of the tiny lures. Instead, go with 4 or 6 and you’ll get a lot more bites. (You’ll lose more jigs, too, but the tradeoff is worth it because you’ll catch a lot more fish.)

Crappies are schooling fish and you’ll almost always find more where you catch that first one if you don’t spook them. Don’t make a lot of noise getting your fish in the boat or re-rigging.

Boating and Processing Your Crappies

Crappies have very thin tissue in their lips, and trying to lift larger ones into the boat with the rod will result in a lot of lost fish, and sometimes a lost lure, too. It’s better to have a long-handled landing net to reach out and scoop them up. If you intend to keep your crappies for the table—and most of us do—it’s wise to kill them immediately by cutting the throat latch, bleeding them out in a bucket of water and then dropping them on ice immediately. Keeping them in a live well for hours or putting them in the ice alive results in stressed out fish that don’t taste nearly as good.

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