Hello all, thank you for allowing me to be part of this wonderful community.

Ill start by introducing myself. I go by Growler, and I live in central New York. I don't fish crappie but they've intrigued me and I'd like to get into fishing them more. I spent about 10 years fishing trout and salmon species exclusively but I bought a house on Oneida Lake 5 years ago and chased walleye since. I feel I'm ok to move onto other fish now and want to begin crappie fishing. I have a pontoon boat that is set up for fishing in the back but don't have a trolling motor yet. When I troll I use drift bags to get to my desired speed of .8mph, I use Garmin echomap 73dv for electronics. I have Scotty rod holders on the boat already. I mainly troll worm harnesses or jig with buck tails, sonars, and the like.

I plan to target crappie both from shore and from the boat once it's ice out. I'm thinking a 4 pole spread off the front to push jigs. An ultra light with slip bobbers for live minnow, and ultra light for jigging.

My question is what is good beginner gear to buy? I don't have a budget in mind but would like to be under $300.00. I have plenty of jigs that I could use, as I ice fishing and have a lot of small jigs and plastics already. I'm sure I'll buy more as I go. I'm thinking high vis line into #4 fluorocarbon for terminal. I'll probably split between a jig rod from shore with another "dead sticked" with a dual minnow rig under a slip bobber. That's my initially plan after research at least.

For that budget what would you recommend for length and brand poles and reels for pushing and for shore fishing? Are my thoughts on gear appropriate for a beginning set up? What else am I missing?

Thank you you for your time, tight lines!