I have learned over the years that crappie that are suspended, say 15 feet, over 30 fow are tough to catch. Longlining is a good way to catch these kind of fish. But crappie that are within 2- 4 feet above the bottom in 30 fow can be easy pickens for tightlineing. Most of the time, especially this time of year, I can usually tell crappie from bait fish, but it is harder to tell crappie from a school of whites etc, but mostly I can tell crappie by the shape of the signals. Xring and I have called the bites many times from the signals we received. Crappiepro fished with me today and most of the time we would predict when a crappie would strike. We would find the school, catch a few and they would move off and the hunt would began again. Its just a matter of spending hundreds of hours watching the FF and fishing. Today we put 40 in the cooler and xring put 20 in his by using this strategy.