1 of the best ways to catch them would be a slip bobber with pan fish jig of your choice or a hook with a split shot. Pretty much any rig you think a crappie would eat 
Drop shot those critters. Tie in a VMC slip-shot hook, six 6 or 4 and hang a minnow or plastic on the hook. Clip on a weight a foot below the hook using a mono lead.
Or use a small 3-way….short lead to the weight off the bottom eye and a 10″-12″ light mono lead to the hook and minnow.
These two approaches can be drifted over the fish or slow trolled over them. You can feel bottom with these units and when you do simply lift the rig up an inch or two so you aren’t dragging in the mud.
Getting right over them with a vertical jig/plastic will catch them too.
If they are on the bottom. 3way trolling first to see if they are active. 3 way with a 1′ dropper to whatever size weight will keep you down there. Then a 2′ lead to a small floating jig head with a minnow. Troll it past and see what happens. Its a very good crappie rig that I have never seen anyone else use. The floating jig head has outfished plain hooks 20:1 for us.
If they won’t hit that, then drop a jig down there and use the sonar like ice fishing.
I do like others… with a twist. Weight on the bottom so I can adjust up to a set depth where I am just above the fish, and get there quickly. I tie a medium loop up about a foot, and another up another foot. Cut the loop so there is a eight inch lead to either a good hook and minnow, or 1″ gulp minnow. This gives you two baits at slightly different depths, plus you get a double at times if they are real active. The gulp minnows will at times far out fish the live minnows….
When you get right above the fish, go to stealth mode with the trolling motor as possible. Pick fish off from above the school as long as possible, and you won’t spook the school. Go right to the bottom fish, and you can scatter the school real quick.
You can do that in WI. In Minnesota we can’t and I am not sure that Iowa anglers can either.
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You can do that in WI. In Minnesota we can’t and I am not sure that Iowa anglers can either.
You can’t have two hooks on one line off one rod in MN? Like a double drop shot? Or pulling a three way with two lures? Didn’t mean to pass on bad info… I love fishing like that in WI, and thought you could have two lines, or lures in MN. My bad.
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You can do that in WI. In Minnesota we can’t and I am not sure that Iowa anglers can either.
You can’t have two hooks on one line off one rod in MN? Like a double drop shot? Or pulling a three way with two lures? Didn’t mean to pass on bad info… I love fishing like that in WI, and thought you could have two lines, or lures in MN. My bad.
Only with flies in MN.
We can do it in Iowa. I do it quite often when straight lining crappie. 5/8 sinker, two minnows a foot apart and just set it in the rod holder so the weight is just off bottom. I do it alot when I’m throwing jigs, I’ll set my dead stick rod with two minnows about 6-8′ down and just let it dead stick as I go down the bank or around docks.
Thank you for the replies, we will give them a try next weekend.
It may go without saying but-those crappies pulled up from really deep (ie 30ft) often experience some barotrauma or swim bladder issues. Over the opener we were marking a bunch of fish on the bottom of a steep break down to 30+ FOW. We were hoping they were walleye and hooked one, but lots of 8-9″ crappies down there too. Mortality for those crappies was unfortunately high so we took a few home for dinner. We lost a big walleye but felt like we had to stop fishing because we were putting the hurt on the crappies. We were vertical jigging with fathead minnows.
Yes, that is a good point. I was hoping for walleye too when we marked the fish. Once we found they were crappie we did see the effect of the pressure change on them.
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