Crappie trolling

Anyone ever troll for crappie? Years ago, I discovered I could catch 'em most any time of day...even on the hottest days, by trolling. I am about to leave the shop right now, pick up my boy and my boat and troll a bit on Paint Creek. I'm betting we'll get 'em.

Update to follow...

We didn't have a lot of time, obviously. But with time being rather short for important things like fishing here lately, it seemed enough. We had about two hours to fish, middle of the day again of course. Anyway, we didn't kill 'em, but we did get 25 or so and one channel cat that was maybe a pound and a half. The schools we found were small. The best one we caught was probably only 10" or so, and I think I may have caught the smallest crappie of my life today! Still, it wasn't a bad way to burn a couple of hours between making pizzas.

DJK Frank 16 said:

Nope never done, never even heard of anyone doing it, but very interested to learn about the technique and what you fellas use when trolling. Sounds like something cool to try on the local reservoirs after the spawn is over.

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As Jim stated, they tend to suspend over fairly deep water. That is relative of course, and doesn't mean the deepest water in the lake. We found 'em today just on sharp drops from 10 into 24 feet. Lots of empty water out there, but when you find them you can just keep running through them and catching fish. Funny thing is I have rarely had luck anchoring and catching these fish, even though I know exactly where they are holding. Something about trolling over them seems to stir them up a little. When you hit it just right, you will get one on every hook in the water. Typically, I will use a 1/16 oz jig head, 2" tail of some sort. Also, the mini-beattle spins are hard to beat. They are 1/32 oz I think. Usually we'll troll just fast enough to make the blade spin. Sometimes we'll set the trolling motor at a higher speed and zig-zag...they often like this approach better than just a straight-line.

Mike said:

Never did that. Did you know that you can troll for flatheads? Now that is a trip.

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I did not. Fill me in.

Cool! We use crankbaits to troll for saugeye down here... catch catfish on occasion, but not enough to say they were targeted. I spoke with a guy on Rocky Fork one day that had caught 8 cats while trolling for saugeye. Maybe he decided to forget the 'eyes and switched to fishing for cats.