First Crappie on Lake Monroe Trolling

Hello everyone! I have been reading the forums for weeks and decided to finally join and become a member.

This summer I decided to dock my boat at a marina and not trailer it anymore. I have a spot on Lake Monroe now and am constantly trying to fish and learn new methods and techniques to get a good catch. Being that the bass action is slow in the summer I started trying targeting anything that would make my day a little more fun. A baitshop told me it was going to be rough until the heat dies down a little. I was used to fishing lakes up north so didn't realize it could get too hot for the fish lol. I was trying crickets and night crawlers to see how the panfish action was, but the small sizes weren't much to write home about

So I decided to try trolling for crappie. I mounted two rod holders on the sides of my small 15' rig and decided to order up some Bandit 200 series lures. The morning started off at 7:00am. I was on Lake Monroe's southwestern end maybe 500-1000 yards from the shore heading north towards the old power plant. For 2 hours I didn't have a single bite. Constantly had to clear off the treble hooks off snails or some plant material. I was running 3 poles. One on each side and one in my hand in the center. I had about 20-40 yards of line out depending on the cast I'm guessing. At 9am, I swapped one rod to a Mr Crappie Slab Daddy jig. I had a #6 (if I recall correctly) slip shot 2 feet above the jig to keep it weighed down. I put two Berkley Powerbait niblets on the tip. Within 5 minutes the line was reeling out. It was one of the biggest crappie of the day! My first crappie in 10+ years!!! So I was excited. I decided to pull the other two Bandit 200s in and swap all 3 to the Slab Daddy jigs. Before I could get the 3rd pole rigged my first pole was going out again with the 2nd crappie, another 1lb+ slab! By noon I had about 15 fish caught with 10 being nice sized keepers. Between noon and 3pm when it started raining it slowed down a lot and only landed another 5 fish in the same time period with lots of no action at all, only had to change the nibbles every 15-20 minutes or they'd dissolve.

Nice first time, makes me want to join the tournament next weekend to see if I have some rookie luck. I ordered up some trolling combo crappie rigs, some hi-vis 8lb line, and a couple various tubes and jigs when I got home, I'm hooked

Wojtek