Quote Originally Posted by satdoc1 View Post
Long Lining for Crappie
For those of you that are not familiar with this way of fishing it is fun and you can cover a lot of water.
I start out with 1- 1/16 teezur jig heads on each rod I tie them with a loop knot about 12 to 14 inches apart I place a southern pro hot grub on road runner jig head using different colors until I find what the fish want if it is cloudy start with a dark color if it is sunny use a light color. Now I use a 14’, 12’, and 10’ bnm pro staff placed in rod holders out the right side of the front and the same on the left. If I have client’s in the back they have 10’ bnm pro staff placed in rod holders pretty much straight out. I use a gps to watch my speed and I start out at 0.5mph when I start moving I begin to get the baits in the water. Start with your 10’ first then the 12’ and last the 14’ this will keep from getting the bait tangled together in the back of boat work from the inside out. Throw the baits about 20 to 30’ behind the boat. Now that we have our baits in the water I am going to start in the channel in about 14’ of water and watch my speed and sonar. I will work the deeper water first and move into more shallow water until I find the fish. Once I find fish I pay close attention to my speed where I can go back over them again. If I am not catching fish I change my speed a little at a time this will adjust the depth of your bait. Now you cannot turn your boat to quick so you have to plan ahead to turn the boat around because you have to make a wide sweeping turn or real up and then turn if you don’t have room to make the wide turn. I will pull jigs anywhere from 16’ of water to 3’. When you first try this you will get tangled up some and even after you have done it awhile you will still tangle up some but it is a great way to locate some fish and this will work all thru spring until the fish go back deep for the summer. I like the road runner jig heads because they add flash and vibration southern pro has many colors to choose from. I use a hi Vis 6# test line this helps me see if my lines do get crossed up.
I was going to respond but I think he covered it above. We usualy longline at speeds between .7 mph to 1.1 mph. I know some folks that will "speed troll" around 1.4 mph to 1.6 mph. Great method when the crappie are schooling in open water.