It really eats up a lot of time when time management is so critical in Crappie fishing. Those who are trying to waste a day this doesn't apply but when I take time to go Crappie fishing lately it's time away from something else. That something else is always work that keeps us treading water to moving forward so it has to get done.

Now that my point of time management is behind us my next point is easy to understand, time spent at each spot thoroughly working out a brush pile with a jig first then fish it with a Shiner - eats Time. I did this yesterday to prove a point, the fish are there they just don't want a jig. To back up a minute - I'm river fishing not on a big 30K acre Lake. On the river many are returning with few Crappie fishing jigs due to the fact the fish want a live bait. Trolling covers a lot of water but fishing Trash Piles with fish on them you just got to fish with something they want to bite. Enter the Humble Shiner, been around forever, few bait shops are left selling Shiners because the Glamor in Shiner fishing is mostly gone.

I go Crappie fishing to catch Crappie, only Crappie, and not for the boat ride, the outdoors activity, etc I get all of that I want. I go to Catch Crappie. For 6 hours of fishing I got 2 pull downs of my BGBS offering but not a Crappie even on the hook. Now if I didn't have a Shiner with me the 2 pictures posted here would be totally different, a empty cooler & a Frowny Face would be the feature of the post.

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If you find yourself down on your luck the last few trips bring a shiner pole along when you head out again and if we buy a few Shiners once in a awhile from our local bait shops maybe they will be around when we need them longer.

Running out of time yesterday due to excessive wind cost me a cooler full of fish but I caught Crappie at Every Stop but only on a Shiner. It wasn't poor quality presentation, I firmly believe no amount of "Teasing" was going to get those Slabs to commit but my Shiners put the move on otherwise Lock Jawed fish.