I don't get trolling

I have always enjoyed the thrill of making the cast and feeling the thump of the bite and setting the hook on crappie and any other species of fish I fish for. It is very exciting to work the jig finding the right depth etc and hitting pay dirt when you figure them out. The perfect cast when you know deep down that you are going to catch one.... nothing like it to me.

I will admit I have never trolled for fish just wandering what thrills you guys that do get out of it. Might open my eyes to something I am missing.

My main reason for trolling is that in a lot of my lakes up here in Iowa, the fish tend to scatter in the mid summer months. With trolling, or more often drifting, I can cover more water and thus catch more fish.

DONT DO IT! Once the spider bites you its over! Worse than a bad drug habit! Your lucky you dont get it. I got it and now i cant get rid of it!

You can't beat a good single poling trip. On a lake you don't know anything about, trolling can help establish a pattern quicker. Both are fun, just in different ways.

That advice is what a friend told me one time about golfing one time. :biggrin Thank Goodness I have resisted that trap.

I would like to have more of a reason than that. If it is just to catch more fish I can put out a trot line and jugs. I figure there has to be more to it than that cause so many folks do it.

If you're catching all the fish you want and having fun doing it, there ain't no need in changing just because someone else does it. When your fishing time is limited, you can maximize your opportunities by trolling. However, especially at this time of year, a good single poler can't hardly be beat.

Welcome to the board. If you want to learn any style of crappie fishing, you can find out about it here.

Eight poles up front. Five of them hooked up in a 30 second span. There's nothing quite like it!

You can cover more water in a short amount of time. This is especially good for a tourney fishermen. I enjoy both and believe there is a time and place for both strategies.

I love it mainly because its nice and relaxing and when you really get into them there's nothing like it, but I also do it because its the most effective way to fill my freezer then I go bass fishing. Still would rather see a bass explode on a top water plug above anything else but love eating crappie.

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Originally Posted by Fastdrop

I have always enjoyed the thrill of making the cast and feeling the thump of the bite and setting the hook on crappie and any other species of fish I fish for. It is very exciting to work the jig finding the right depth etc and hitting pay dirt when you figure them out. The perfect cast when you know deep down that you are going to catch one.... nothing like it to me.

I will admit I have never trolled for fish just wandering what thrills you guys that do get out of it. Might open my eyes to something I am missing.

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Looks like you are doing a pretty good job of it right now :-)

It's the same thrill.......working a set of rods on the front of the boat and changing a multitude of factors to find what they want and establish a pattern that the fish have no defense against.....nothing like it. I single poled with straight jigs for thirty five years.....It still has it's place and I keep plenty of jigpoles around here rigged and ready but 99% of the time it's multi-pole fishing for me. Believe it takes a pretty good skill level to be real successful and consistent and a lot of guys have tried it and gone back to the single pole because they just couldn't get the hang of it.......others just flat out prefer the single pole method and there is nothing wrong with that. I have a friend younger than me who bales hay with an ancient haybaler pulled by a giant Belgian mare....and he cooks on a wood stove. That is how he likes to do it and he is very good at it.......nothing wrong with doing things the old way.

I troll for the simple fact that during certain times of the year the fish are not in the brush on some lakes I fish. Besides that, crappie are notorious to suspend in open water and I like to follow them.
Don't get me wrong, I'll be on one end of my jig pole for most of the year. I love feeling a crappie when it hammers a jig. But it's a lot if fun when the fish suspend and I got 8 poles on the front of the boat!!

Im with ya i love that thump! I double rod alot, getting two thumps at once is awesome! 5 6 7 or 8 thumps at once sounds tempting! I bet a big ole catfish could set ya back for 10 or 20 minutes though! lol

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Originally Posted by Fastdrop

That advice is what a friend told me one time about golfing one time. :biggrin Thank Goodness I have resisted that trap.

I would like to have more of a reason than that. If it is just to catch more fish I can put out a trot line and jugs. I figure there has to be more to it than that cause so many folks do it.

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Thanks for the welcome!!

I think this board is going to suit me just fine. So far the answers have been better than I could of hoped for. I know deer hunters who love to sit on a power line and shoot deer at 100 to 200 yards. They seem happy with the results and they usually are successful but I like to call them shooters instead of hunters. Give me the deep woods and let me get one with buckshot and I am a happy camper although i go a few years without pulling the trigger because I can't get a good shot or just don't find him that year.

I am convinced by the answers that there is much more skill to trolling than I was thinking it was.

as long as you feel the thmp

Everyone has their way of getting the juice going. I like to see that pole bend when a crappie hits the lure as it slides by. Sometimes it a really hard hit and the rod just bends over double. Other times the bite is a fairly soft/light, and the rod just slowly bends and then stays bent. You can get hard bites and soft bites trolling, but you don't "feel" the thump, you see the thump in the way the rod bends, and how fast it bends when they hit. On occasion, you hear the thump when the rod jumps and rattles around in the rod holder. Time to wake up, put the coffee and donuts down, and reel a fish in. :Rofl

The home folks called me crappie top back in the day because on the Saline or Ouachita rivers sitting in one with a single pole in hand is where I could be found 75% of the time until I got serious with spider rigging and now thats my preferred style 90% of the time. It's more relaxing..I catch more fish...it's easier to learn new water and there is much more strategy involved than you might think and when you get dialed in on just the right depth, speed and lure and the poles start bending there is nothing like it.

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Originally Posted by Tony McCall

Eight poles up front. Five of them hooked up in a 30 second span. There's nothing quite like it!

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and those five have 1 1/2 to 2 lbers all on them at one time. Tony has it for me its those rod tips all going down at one time or very quickly in a min or less. Fun Stuff

it can be a three ring circus at times, but its definitely a fun way to fish with folks that arent on the water much and just want to catch allot of fish, great for the kiddos fur sure, keeps there attention much better and they can sit right next to ya for any assistance

It's a matter of preference. I perfer feeling the ''Thump'' on a jig. It is a way to catch lots of suspended fish. But I choose a jig pole over a Spider rig myself. I have fished about every method out there too. Every method has it's time and each have a choice.

Don't do it!

Depends on time of year what I'm doing. Here lately I'm tossing curl tail jigs towards the banks and structure mostly but once Summer hits and crappie hit the deeper brush I'm back to watching the graph for fish and brush with a long pole in each hand and the rod holder handy where I can just set a pole in once I hook up on the other pole. Pre-spawn crappie I'm usually spider rigging and back to watching the graph but once they go shallow its firing curl tails a lot more.