Crappie on Sam Rayburn

Anyone else noticing that crappie on Sam Rayburn won't touch a jig, but gobble up minnows? and what depth are you finding them?

Not on SR, but on my home crappie are like that. In the month of August minnows rule!

Went yesterday. Again on would touch minnows. They wouldn't even look at a jig. Noticed that almost all caught were in less than 20ft of water.

.....very light very natural jigs in the summer can make all the difference .....with lots of sparkle

Going this morning. Start off with jigs, but will have minnows as a backup.

And the brightest chart you can find if the water is turbid btw

I ain't bought a minnow in 20 years

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i dont know about that lake but i been doing well on just plain white lately as well

Well what I find not far from you, over on Toledo Bend is minnows are important in summer for me, but not alone. Sometimes I will use a heavy jig on the bottom and above that about 12" to 14" I tie on a #1 or #2 Gamakatsu Dropshot hook for the minnow. Most of the time I get the smaller ones on the minnow and larger crappie on the jig. Personally I feel the small ones hitting the minnows can get the larger ones to also attack something and usually it's the jig. Usually not quite as one sided as the example I am about to tell. My wife and I went out one evening late for a quick trip out and we actually caught 28, but only 8 were keepers (this was before out minimum size was taken off) and all 8 came on the jigs. Most, but not all small ones were on the minnow.

Being they are deeper in summer is why I use a heavy jig in summer and it also doubles as my weight. Now saying that I do often believe you will do better using a small jig like Ketchn is talking about. One of my old time favorite jigs (before I stated tying) was a jig made by Blue Fox and it had a Chrome Plated head with red thread and some kind of crinkle Mylar type stretchy stuff as like a skirt tail. It was super short, maybe an inch long and was a killer! I still have a good many of them and I do need to dig them out to try next spring when I am trolling!

Now I will not say that this is always the thing, but I do believe this to be true and you usually will catch 75% of good ones on the jigs!

Skip

good post skip. thanks!!