Crappies on hardwater

IF –
You could only use 1 rig for crappies thru the ice for the entire season, what would be tied onto your line?

Mine would be a red hook and minnow.

Swedish Pimple

Home made clouser minnow with colors that no one else has.

small tungsten jig with a maki plastic

Kender’s tungsten jig and a panfish plastics black chigger

Gumball jighead, Flu Flu jig with some plastic tail.

1/32oz VMC Flash Champ spoon tipped with minnow head

Silver stop sign tipped with fat head

I would have to agree with the flash champ spoon. 1/32 chartreuse pink glow with anything on the hook. It is awesome for crappie.

Tear drop tungsten tipped with a fatheads head .

4mm or 5mm tungsten from Custom Jigs & Spins with a Trigger X spike work plastic and a red spike

Morel King wrote:

Tear drop tungsten tipped with a fatheads head .

Same but I’d tip with spikes. Especially later in winter, those crappies can be in super slow motion. Only way to know they’re on is by seeing them on the Vexilar. Vexed you EPG…

Panfish asassin.

Cubby mini mite. Pink head white tail and a crappie minnow hooked through the snout. All year long

4mm Larson’s Quality Glow jig and a pink maki mino

A 1/16 ounce forage minnow jogging spoon sporting a micro biggie was my first option and I seldom had to switch. Glow red on the lure, white on the plastic.

This has been a great open water combo when cold fronts drive crappies deep too.

1/12oz slender spoon in pink UV with a large glob of spikes and waxies.

1/16th oz Lindy Red Rattlin Flyer Spoon tipped with their meal of the day, either a waxie or a minnow head.

A 4mm tungsten from just about anybody. Fiskas Wolfram, Cusom Jigs and Spins Chekai is good and a reasonable price. Tipped with a Little Atom Micro Nugie, there are very few days I can’t catch plenty of crappies on this, it fishes fairly fast, and catches crappies from big to small, active to neutral.

I’m always surprised how many people use bigger spoons. Unless I don’t fish them correctly, there’s not a lot of days that I will have numbers of crappies eat a spoon or small swimming jig. The Tungsten and plastic almost always produces for me.

Tucker

Pink drop kick with a pink Berkeley whipworm

curleytail wrote:

I’m always surprised how many people use bigger spoons. Unless I don’t fish them correctly, there’s not a lot of days that I will have numbers of crappies eat a spoon or small swimming jig. The Tungsten and plastic almost always produces for me.

Agree 100%

The smallest sized jigging rap (don’t remember which one that is) tipped with waxworms.

I’m with curlytail &

curleytail wrote:

I’m always surprised how many people use bigger spoons. Unless I don’t fish them correctly, there’s not a lot of days that I will have numbers of crappies eat a spoon or small swimming jig. The Tungsten and plastic almost always produces for me.

Tucker

There is a time and a place for everything IMO but if only one…I’ll take a rattling spoon of some sort and as you know crappies have much larger mouths than a gill, plus it has a better possibility of pulling in fish from a distance. Now if I am camped over a school, nothing beats a good tungsten jig with plastic to get right back down for another one, but hook up ratio on larger crappies is much better with a treble hook.

curleytail wrote:

I’m always surprised how many people use bigger spoons. Unless I don’t fish them correctly, there’s not a lot of days that I will have numbers of crappies eat a spoon or small swimming jig. The Tungsten and plastic almost always produces for me.

Agree!

In my opinion, the raps and spoons work great when the fish are biting. But when the bite is tough there’s no way I would use a reaction type bait like this in the winter.

10% of the time I’ll use a reaction bait like a small jigging rap or spoon. Especially, if I’m hole hoping active crappie and need to get their attention. These baits fish fast and you can really cover water.

The other 90% of the time I’ll use a #12 Tungsten jig and Euro or plastic and Euro. This technique will put fish on the ice day in day out without question. Especially if the fish are somewhat negative, this technique will dominate the more aggressive presentations. Just my opinion of course.

Joe Scegura wrote:

The other 90% of the time I’ll use a #12 Tungsten jig and Euro or plastic and Euro. This technique will put fish on the ice day in day out without question. Especially if the fish are somewhat negative, this technique will dominate the more aggressive presentations. Just my opinion of course.

Agree 100% Joe. If you look at my previous reply above…pretty much the same.

And remember the OP’s original question…”You could only use 1 rig for crappies thru the ice for the entire season, what would be tied onto your line?”

#3 white rippin rap

1/12 silver kastmaster no bait. Seems like it can make them bite when they don’t really want too.