Stop, look, and listen to the Crappie

Presentation, presentation, presentation. When , where and how do I decide? Which technique will be the most productive today when I get on the water. Vertical jig or drop shot(personal favorites) flipping the slip cork, casting(my least favorite),spider rigging, long lining. The answer to which technique will I use comes from not only the been there done that last season knowledge but the most modern tools of the trade. My Humminbird electronics are most definitely the window into the underwater world. A technological innovation that has leveled the tournament fields. Allowing the amateur to compete with the best of the best on lakes they may have never fished. Cartography that lets us break down a lake in hours instead of prefishing for a week before a tournament. Without these modern fish finders my success rate would not be as consistent and that’s what your looking for in a guided experience. Consistent catching is what brings my customers back . Today’s presentation will be vertical jig or drop shotting a minnow because we just drove over a stump on a shallow to deep transition area that was loaded with fish, based on all the bright white electronic blips I just seen on my finders that was surrounding the stump. Tomorrow the wind will change and the bait will get pushed from this area and those fish will leave that stump to follow their favorite meal and may be suspended and relating to nothing but open water bait clouds. It’s now time to get out the 16’ ACC trolling poles turn on the Humminbird 360 and follow the baitfish. Tomorrow my clients specify they would like to fish this clear water lake that they just keep hearing about. The fish are tightly schooled in open water and the boat can’t get close enough with trolling poles without spooking them in every direction. Time to stay back and cast to them. Just recently I had a group of new anglers so we started off slip corking a minnow over brush piles and even though I could clearly see hundreds of fish on my units, they simply were not getting bit. So I grabbed my favorite 11’ rear reel seat pole and a single 1/8oz jig with a ATX wicked shad(orange/chartreuse) and dropped it in the same spot right beside the corks and minnows that weren’t being touched and Pow there was a thump that I could feel all the way up my arm. These fish turned their nose up to a minnow but simply destroyed a artificial bait. Within a hour we had a two person limit. Bait is definitely a trial and error situation some days.
The last couple days of wind and the water temperature are absolutely the most important factors that dictates where I start looking for fish but my electronics tell me what they are doing which helps me decide what technique I will use to catch them. Regardless if it’s Rend lake, Carlyle lake, Lake of Egypt, or Kincaid or I’m in Mississippi my electronics will not lie and I will be prepared to use whatever technique needed at all times. I also should thank ACC rods for having all the weapons necessary for each technique that allows me to be so versatile.