Floats, corks, and bobbers paired with minnows or soft plastics will all catch spring crappies. However, if you want to cover water faster and increase your efficiency, Jason Mitchell explains that hair jigs can be an excellent tool. The Northland Tackle Tungsten Crappie King Fly Jig is an excellent bait for this and crappies will eat them up with nothing else on them. Plastics are durable but hair jigs are even more hardy, you don’t have to worry about re-baiting, fixing a plastic, or sending your bait flying on the cast. Even under a bobber, simply cast it out, twitch, and go.
The biggest thing with spring crappies is keeping your bait in the strike zone. Tungsten is more dense than lead, so it allows you to get a smaller profile to stay down in front of the fish. If you’re using forward facing sonar, this presentation also shows up really well.
For the setup, Mitchell uses a 6lb braid tied with an Alberto knot to an 8lb fluorocarbon leader for some extra strength when flipping fish over the side of the boat. When tying on horizontal jigs, using a loop knot can ensure that your bait will always hang horizontally underwater.
