Ultralight Tactics For Crappie In Timber By John Neporadny Jr.

Missouri’s Stockton Lake has water clear enough for anglers to resort to light line and ultralight tackle to catch crappie, but the reservoir’s abundant woody snags induces many to stick with the heavy stuff.

So I was surprised when I fished for the first time with Rick Flint and discovered he exclusively uses ultralight tackle and 2-pound Maxima monofilament for taking crappie from Stockton’s standing timber. “The light line allows that jig to fall naturally plus I can use a 1/32-ounce jig and it doesn’t affect the way it falls,” says Flint. “I just get a lot more bites using the light line than the heavy line.” The lighter line also allows Flint’s jigs to fall faster when he has to fish timber as deep as 35 feet.

The Missouri angler probes through the timber without any qualms about the thin line attached to his 1/16- or 1/32-ounce jig. “I will stay back away from it to start and pitch out and let the jig drift back into the timber,” he says. “If I don’t get a bite on the drift coming in then I will release the bail and let the line drop. You have to watch the line the whole time because if you are sitting in timber 10 feet deep and your line stops falling at 6 or 8 feet then something probably got your jig.”

After employing his pitch-and-drift presentation to both sides of a tree, Flint moves closer to the target and sticks his rod tip next to the trunk. He opens the bail of his spinning reel and lets the jig free-fall down the trunk through the gnarly branches.
“The important thing is once you hook that fish, you have to keep it coming up,” says Flint. “If you have a pretty good rod you can pull pretty hard on it with 2-pound test before it will break. As long as that fish doesn’t make a nasty straight-forward run chances are good that it won’t break the line.”

Flint believes the rod type is critical to fishing light line in timber so he opts for a 6 1/2-foot G-Loomis ultralight model with a fast tip. “It acts and reacts just like a flyrod,” he says. “The rod is what actually plays the fish the same as a flyrod does.”
Setting the drag properly is also crucial so Flint tests the drag on his Shimano Sienna 500 reel. “When you pull the line out you don’t want it at the breaking point so you need to back it off a bit, but you also don’t want it twisting the line, which occurs when the drag is releasing line while you are reeling.”

Other crappie experts who scale down to light line while fishing timber are Kent Driscoll, Travis Bunting and Frank Saksa. They use the following tactics to take crappie from woody snags with thin line and ultralight gear.

Single Pole Dipping

“One of the biggest advantages you can get on catching light-biting crappie that are in a negative mood, whether it is from a cold-front conditions, high-pressure super-bright skies, rising water or any conditions stacked against you, is to downsize in line,” says Driscoll, a tournament veteran from Georgia. “Your feel and sensitivity increases dramatically when you go down in line size. You can feel when the fish sucks in your bait especially when the fish might not move and might just be holding it in its mouth.”

The lightest line Driscoll scales down to is 4-pound test (Vicious monofilament). He matches is with 1/32- or 1/16-ounce jigheads and a Southern Pro Stinger, Southern Pro 1 1/2-inch tube or Lake Fork Tackle Baby Shad for fishing on the Mississippi lakes of Grenada, Arkabutla and Sardis. “Down in that neck of the woods it’s not uncommon to catch 1 3/4- to 2 1/2- pound crappie,” Driscoll says.

The right light line-tackle combination will help you lead those big crappie out of any timber tangles. “You need to make sure you match the line with an ultrasensitive lightweight rod,” Driscoll says. “It doesn’t do any good to put light line on a heavy-duty rod like a B’n’M BrushCutter or other super stiff pole. Typically I like to match light line with a B’n’M Buck’s Best Ultralite Pole. It is a supersensitive jig pole and is the lightest jig pole on the market. It also has the touch system 6 to 8 inches above the reel up the foam handle where there is a cut-out slot for your finger so you can actually put your finger on the rod blank.”
Driscoll improves sensitivity by placing his index finger on the rods touch system and then running the line from his reel over his pinky and under his ring finger. “That increases my feel so if I don’t see the tip move hopefully I can feel the bite through my line,” he says.

When a heavyweight crappie bites, Driscoll avoids horsing the fish out of the cover. “As long as you have your drag set light on your reel and can feed some line out and use a dip net, then typically you will be fine,” he says. “A lot of times I will let the fish strip out 6 to 10 feet of line and let it play out a little bit. Then I will slowly bring the fish back to me.”

During a Crappiemasters Ultimate Challenge two-day, single pole, artificial lures only tournament at Lake Conway in Arkansas, Travis and Charles Bunting encountered a cold-front situation that made the crappie extremely finicky. Since they had no fish in the livewell the first half of the first competition day while using heavier line and tackle, the Buntings decided to scale down to 4-pound fluorocarbon and lighter poles to probe the root systems of cypress trees.

“It allowed us to get smaller baits down a little faster and it gave us a little bit better feel,” recalls Travis Bunting. The father-and-son team finished fifth in the event by dipping 1 1/2-inch Southern Pro tubes on 1/32-ounce jigheads into the roots to trick inactive crappie into biting. They matched their line with a 12-foot B’n’M Buck’s Best Ultralite Pole.

When they got a bite, the Buntings had to finesse the fish out of the wood cover. “We had to sling the fish to get it away from the timber,” says Travis Bunting. The light line prevented them from swinging the fish into the boat, so they relied on a net to scoop up the crappie when they led it into open water.

Probing deep timber

When crappie suspend in pole timber 25 to 45 feet deep in the winter on Bull Shoals Lake, Frank Saksa relies on 3-pound test Maxima Fluorocarbon to deliver his 1/16-ounce jigs to the deep cover. The local guide favors the 3-pound test because it has a small diameter to drop his jigs quickly to the timber yet has enough strength to move a fish out of the deep cover. Saksa can also get a faster drop rate on his light jigs since fluorocarbon absorbs water and sinks quicker than monofilament.

Since the tops of the pole timber he targets are well below the surface, Saksa has to depend on his electronics to find the deep cover. The potential for snagging a jig in the timber is greater since the cover is out of sight. “You will lose a few jigs until you figure out your drop rate, where the trees are and where you are going to target the fish,” warns Saksa.

The Arkansas angler relies on a 6 ½-foot medium-light rod with a soft tip for fishing light line in the deep pole timber. Saksa favors a longer rod for better casting distance when he finds crappie suspended higher in the water column (less than 25 feet deep). He switches to vertical jigging in the timber when the fish are more than 30 feet deep.

For the deepest fish, Saksa finds the timber with his electronics and positions his boat over the top of the cover so he can place his jig slightly above the wood or alongside the tree. Using a weedless jighead or slider head prevents Saksa from snagging when he is searching through the trees. “Once I get my count down and I find some fish I will go to just a straight jighead,” he says.

Since some of his clients have trouble feeling a bite with jigs, Saksa sets them up with a light-line slip bobber rig with a minnow. The slip bobber allows his clients to drop their minnows as deep as 25 to 30 feet and keep their bait at the same depth as the suspending crappie. The small diameter of the 3-pound test and the low visibility of the fluorocarbon make the line nearly invisible to crappie in the clear waters of Bull Shoals

The lake contains crappie in the 2-pound class along with walleye and stripers that tend to bite his jig, so Saksa sets the hook with a snap of the wrist rather than jerking the rod hard to prevent from snapping the skinny line. The light, long rod absorbs some of the shock of the hook set as does loosening the drag so line slips out of the reel when Saksa snaps his wrists.

If the bite seems to be off in heavy timber, go light on your line and tackle to trigger more strikes. Then use a light touch to steer the crappie out of the woods.