A Timely Twist for Bluegills, Perch and Crappies

Minnow Lining

Crappies and perch may be caught using small lures tipped with maggots. A particularly overlooked option is a plain (no dressing) leadhead jig that should weigh 1/16 ounce or less. Pack the jig with maggots. I don’t know what it looks like to fish, but it works every place I’ve been, from Ohio to the Dakotas to Canada.

At times, however, crappies and perch prefer a minnow presentation. Use what I term a “minnow line.” It should consist of about 27-pound-test black Dacron line or a braided superline like Spiderwire Stealth testing about 30 pounds. You’ll be hand-over-handing this rig, and the Dacron is essential to do this quickly and efficiently. Trying this with monofilament is a joke, yet most fishermen fear that Dacron spooks fish. Sure, if you tie it directly to your bait.

Tie your own stop knot and slide it up a tad. Add a small bead and slip a Carlyle float on the dacron. Tie about a 3-foot section of 4-pound-test clear or gray monofilament on the swivel at the end of the dacron to serve as your leader.

The minnow can be on a plain hook, though I usually prefer to anchor the minnow with a wide-gapped ice fly. The teardrop adds attracting color to the minnow, and more importantly, makes it difficult for the minnow to swim and therefore easy for fish to catch.

File most of the barbs from your hooks: this makes minnow-hooking and hook-setting easier. Barbs aren’t necessary to land fish, use only enough barb to hold the minnow on.

Hold the minnow in your hand and facing away from you. Barely nick the hook under its dorsal fin, with the hook pointing away from you toward its head, which allows the minnow to swim seductively and increases your hooking percentage immensely.

Don’t hesitate to bend hooks out 10 degrees or so to facilitate hooking the bait. It probably helps hook more crappies and perch, too.

Perch usually prefer the bait within 3 feet of bottom; crappies may be anywhere in a column of water. Say crappies are coming through 5 to 10 feet off bottom in 30 feet of water.

One approach would be to set your float so the bait is suspended 8 feet above the bottom when the float’s on the surface. This lets you fish the float from the surface down 3 feet, with your bait from 5 to 8 feet a above bottom.

Cover more water by including a lift 2 to 3 feet above the water. After lifting (an attracting maneuver), drop the float slowly as you follow it down to the surface of the water with your rod tip. When a crappie takes, the sinking line hesitates. The addition of the lift means you can cover 5 to 6 feet of water instead of about 3.

Suspender floating is, by the way, as applicable to larger predators as it is to panfish.