Have to say there's nothing like dropping a jig in a brush pile loaded with crappie. With that said, I have minnows in my boat 98 % of the time. I have seen to many days especially in the winter, where you can straight line minnows with a niblet and catch bigger crappie than on artificial bait. I do believe you can catch quantity with jigs but if you are fishing for big crappie, a minnow is hard to beat. Just my preference but I would rather go through the hassle of taking live bait and catching 10 big crappie versus using a jig and catching 30 short fish. I know there's a lot of big fish caught on jigs but if I had to make a choice there would be minnows in the boat.