Alexandria Crappies! 10-13-09

I decided to give the walleye a rest last night and go hunt for some Big Ole slab crappies. I targeted a lake that is notorious for big crappies and as usual I was the only one at the access. After a quick spin around the lake with my sonar I found em in 18FOW hovering over the fallen weed beds near a steep break. I was using one of those new 1/4oz XChange jigs by Lindy with a fathead. I ended up getting a whole mess of slabs and they ranged from 11 1/2″ – 13”+. It’s amazing how active these fish get in the Fall!

Later I moved to the outside weed edge in about 21-26 FOW to look for a walleye or two, so I popped on a 3/8oz XChange head and in about a second I was ready for some walleye. I didn’t have but 15min before dark but I ended up getting a nice 20″ Eye to end the night. If you haven’t checked out these new jigs by Lindy they are slick

Below are a couple pics of the crappies this lake can produce! Sorry for the poor pics, I was by myself and my camera was switched to the wrong setting

Those are some NICE SLABS

Very Nice! Man am I jealous…

Nice pies

Makes my mouth water just thinking about giving those a bath in oil-

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Those are some NICE SLABS

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Ditto on the nice slabs!

Them r some nice Slabs

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yummie

Dang nice Slabs!!!

Jami

Are you by chance the Lindy Rep?
I haven’t heard anything too exciting about those exchange jig heads.
Ever try to fish a 1/8 or 1/16 ounce jigs on a 1/0 hook?
I think not.
If they offered a hook to match the weight I may consider them. Otherwise I like to re-tie often anyway to maintain decent knot strenght anyway.
Just my .02…

PS- Nice slabs, hopefully some of those great fish were released!

Actually I’m not, but I do like these jigs for certain scenarios. You need to remember that this is a tool to do a certain job and it’s not a solve all.

I use these jigs when I’m using fairly large bait like a shiner or big fathead. Have you ever tried finding an 1/8oz jig with a big enough gap to fish a large shiner or Redtail effectively? That’s where the X-Change system shines. I can fish a shiner vertically in 25FOW or switch the jig weight to an 1/8oz and pitch it up in to a couple feet. I can’t think of a better set up for fishing this way.

Where these lures will never shine is if you plan to fish a crappie minnow with a 1/16oz jig head and 2/0 hook. I don’t think that’s what these were intended for. You don’t use a hammer to tighten a bolt and this is the same thing. Don’t use a large hooked jig to fish sunfish.

A good rule of thumb I always use is, match your hook gap to the size of the minnow you’re using. You never want your bait to fill the entire gap of your hook nor do you want a hook that’s way too big for the bait you’re using. I always use a hook that’s slightly bigger than my bait. This will ensure me more hook ups and yet a hook that doesn’t out shine my bait. I hope this clears up why I use these jigs.