Spider Rig Trials - 1st Attempt

[Tundah]

Decided to wing it this morning and give it the ole college try. Took my oldest daughter with me to our little 200 acre lake. It's a great lake for testing new things. It's got average to small crappie, huge bluegill and shellcrackers, and pathetic bass

Rods

• Six 14' Southern Crappie Rods, one 14' CrappieMaxx IM6, and one 12' CrappieMaxx IM6 *NOTE* CrappieMaxx had a little more backbone, but both brands performed very nicely

Rig

• 6lb Hi-Vis mono main line on spinning reels. 1 oz barrel weight followed by a glow-in-the-dark bead to a swivel. 2 foot leader of Trilene 4lb test mono in low-vis green.

Jigs

• Combination of 1/16oz Roadrunner and a couple 1/8oz painted round jighead (no spinner)

Lures

• Used my same go-to - Kalin curly tails and Southern Pro in my confidence colors - Acid Rain, John Deere, Blk/Blue/Chart
• Tries some new ones - 3 inch Bobby Garland Slab Slay'R and the 2.5 inch Scented Wiggl'R
• Crappie nibbles - the ones with the darn sparkles that I mistakenly bought and will never get again

Results:

The surface temperature was 61 degrees and it was foggy, overcast, and the occasional light drizzle. We caught 18 speck in just over two hours on all rods, including two double hook ups. Definitely more challenging landing them compared to longlining. We found them on the deepest contour, closest to the shoreline. The cool thing was we kept seeing them chase the bait schools breaking the surface. It was neat being able to turn the boat on a dime and go right to the spot and hookup. We were able to range in speed from 0.4 to 0.9, so still could cover some ground.

While I still much rather enjoy the excitement of longlining, I do plan to employ this technique more this year. Specifically on certain smaller bodies of water or in instances where I want to focus on a couple of isolated spots that I can repeatedly circle.

Lessons Learned:

• "Tactical Backwinding" - When a shallow bite occurred, < 4ft deep, found it effective to slowly backwind while maintaining pressure to be able to net and land it.
• I'm happy with the 1oz heavier weight, lets me use the speed of my choice. This was especially true to impart action on the roadrunners - 0.4 seemed the slowest speed to cause a decent spin.
• Going to have to put my rod rack holders back on the boat. 8 long rods was not fun to manage across the middle of the boat deck.
• Going to stick with single jigs. With 8 rods out I can cover the water column effectively without dealing with the tangles and stresses of a double rig.

Hope this helps someone wanting to give this method a try!