Scaled Down Spider Rigging

The slow-trolling method known as spider rigging has been used for years to catch boatloads of crappies on almost any body of water in any weather and water conditions. Boats toting numerous long crappie poles, from bow to stern, are a common sight on Dixie lakes, where crappie crafts look like mutant water spiders skimming across the surface.

Two crappie tournament veterans have improvised on spider rigging to meet the legal requirements of their home state. Tony Edgar, a Versailles, Missouri, angler fishes the CRAPPIE USA trail, and Charlie Hildreth, a Gaston, Indiana, pro has won two CRAPPIE USA events, a Crappie Angler Sportsman Tour (C.A.S.T.) event, and is a former C.A.S.T. national points champion.

"In a lot of places only one rod and one hook are allowed," Hildreth says . In his home state of Indiana, he can legally use three rods and two hooks per pole. "That allows two people to work six poles and a bunch of hooks when spider rigging, which is just asking for tangles," he warns.

In Missouri, Edgar is also limited to three rods by law, but can add more to his rod holders if he puts his name, address, and phone number on the rods and uses fewer than 33 hooks.

Meanwhile, the CRAPPIE USA trail allows competitors to use four rods apiece for each team member or eight rods for an angler competing individually. So the crappie pros scale down their spider rigging to meet tournament requirements. Sparse rigging has multiple advantages.

Loading eight rods on the front of the boat allows Edgar to comply with tournament rules and have a more stable boat for slow trolling. With two persons standing in the front of the boat, the added weight pushes the boat deeper into the water, stabilizing it, particularly on windy days. This prevents waves from constantly bouncing his poles and making his bait bounce up and down. "If the bait is bouncing around a lot, the fish aren't going to bite it," Edgar says.

Since the gas tank on Edgar's Ranger Fisherman is located in the bow, he keeps the tank full to add more weight to the front. At times he also mounts sand bags in the bow to stabilize the boat in rough water. Placing all of his rods in the bow helps Edgar stay in the crappie's strike zone longer.

"I have my transducer on my trolling motor and the graph is up front so I try to position my boat where we're keeping our lures right over the top of sunken brushpiles," he says. He can also keep his boat positioned over the breaklines of a creek channel by keeping a constant vigil on his electronics. "I'm constantly looking at my electronics and then at my rod tip. It's kind of like watching a tennis match where you keep looking back and forth."

PRESENTATION

Edgar's modified spider system consists of eight 12-foot crappie poles, each equipped with a Shakespeare Wondereel spooled with 10-pound-test line mounted on a Tite-Lok rod-holder system. He usually rigs his rods with two lures or hooks by tying on a three-way swivel and two leader lines of 8-pound test. Edgar's first leader is about 6 to 8 inches long, and he occasionally uses stiffer monofilament to make the hook stand out straight from the main line. He runs a bottom leader (dropper) of about 24 inches for fish holding in a tight school close to cover and extends his leader to 3 to 4 feet for scattered, suspended fish.

Each of Edgar's rigs are weighted with an egg sinker attached to the 24-inch dropper, between the swivel and the bottom hook or lure. He secures the sinker with a double knot about 12 inches below the swivel and then ties his jig 12 inches below the weight. Edgar favors a 1/2-ounce slipsinker for most applications, although he switches to a 3/4-ounce version on windy days. He uses medium-size shiners when he fishes with livebait.

"The main bait on my spider rig is a straight hook and a minnow," he says. "That's simply the most natural bait. If it gets real tough out there, that's what I go to."

He typically uses a #2 gold Aberdeen hook with a flicker or small spinner blade to produce added flash. Most of the time, he also tips the back end of the hook with a Berkley Crappie Nibble, which helps prevent the minnow from slipping off the hook.This adds an appetizer to the menu. Edgar also further enhances minnows and artificial lures by spraying on Kodiak Scent.

A variety of Southern Pro tubes and Crappie Pro solid plastic baits work well for Edgar's spider tactics. He also uses a spinner jighead when crappies are more aggressive in early spring and early fall.

Water clarity determines jig color choices. In dirty water, he uses a lure with a tint of chartreuse. Muddy water calls for dark hues such as black and chartreuse or purple and black; while white or yellow and white, are Edgar's selections for clear water.

At the start of the day, Edgar varies the colors of his lures and the depths of his rigs. "If you start out on your home lake, you kind of know what you're doing already, but on unfamiliar lakes, use four or five different colors of baits and try different depths to let the fish tell you what they want," he suggests. "Start by gathering information from locals and expand from there."

He sets some of his rigs as shallow as 2 to 4 feet, his deepest rigs at 12 to 14 feet. He rarely spider rigs deeper than 20 feet. "Deeper than 20 feet, I switch back to one rod and jig vertically," he says. Using two different lures on each rig allows him to cover two depth ranges with one rod and facilitates the discovery of the day's hot bait. In clear water, he resorts to one lure and replaces the egg sinker with a split shot to prevent spooking. Once he starts catching crappies with a particular lure color at a certain depth he sets some of his other rigs the same way.

When hovering over brushpiles, he sets some rigs so lures barely tick the top of the cover. His electronics show how high the brush rises from the bottom, which indicates how deep sets should be. After slowly trolling over the top of the brush, he backs up so his lures pass over the cover again. If the brush produces fish, after a couple of passes he drops marker buoys on the spot and continues to work it by jigging vertically with a 10-foot crappie pole and a weedless wireguard jig. This tactic allows him to catch fish suspended above the brush as well as crappies holding tight to cover.

"Summer is when spider rigging works best because crappies hold deeper, out on the edge of the channels, relating to a breakline more than cover," he says. Since crappies can be scattered anywhere along a breakline, he likes his chances of catching more fish by spider rigging with multiple poles rather than trying to vertically jig with one rod. When spider rigging an open bank like this, he slowly drifts along the structure. All he wants the trolling motor to do is keep the boat in line. In effect, spider rigging becomes vertical jigging with eight poles.

Watching his lines helps Edgar determine the right trolling speed for his rig. It should be a vertical presentation. Without lines running under the boat.

He usually drifts with the wind. "I do that because most fish seem to be facing into the wind or moving with it, depending on how deep they are and whether or not a reverse current exists at that depth, and depending upon whether or not they're following baitfish that are following wind-blown veils of plankton. Following the wind keeps me on them." If the wind pushes his boat too fast, he slows the drift by dragging a windsock or plastic bucket behind the boat.