How to Longline Troll for Crappie

Longline trolling with jigs is an excellent way to locate and catch crappie. It can produce good catches year-round through much of the country and is a simple technique at its core. It is an excellent approach for anglers who don’t have forward facing sonar or who don’t enjoy that style of fishing, especially when the fish are not holding close to visible shallow cover.

Brad Chappell, a longtime guide on Ross Barnett Reservoir and host of a highly popular podcast, The Crappie Connection, has trolled for many years and is one of the nation’s most respected voices on longlining. Like many crappie guides, Chappell currently spends the most guiding time “scoping,’ which refers to pitching or casting to fish he can see on forward facing sonar. However, he still does quite a bit of trolling, both because it’s a style of fishing that many of his clients enjoy and because it’s a technique that is better suited for many anglers’ skillset or experience and at times to the day’s conditions.

“I can take someone crappie fishing, and THEY can catch every fish we catch that day – from 4 years old to 94, no matter the skill level,” Chappell said about longline trolling. At times he’ll also have highly experienced anglers who simply want to enjoy a more relaxing day or want to change things up – maybe fishing with live sonar one day and longlining the next.

Chappell makes full use of technology when he trolls. He uses a trolling motor with autopilot and GPS speed control, the most modern electronics (including live sonar), and rods of four different lengths to maximize his clients’ opportunities to catch fish. Longline trolling can be as simple as someone want to make it, though, and Chappell’s years of experience can save any angler a LOT of time on the water and be applied to make their trolling efforts more productive.

Chappell typically trolls with eight lines, each rigged with two crappie jigs, so he has 16 baits working. He fishes two lines out the back (slightly angled) and three on each side with those rods extended roughly perpendicular to the boat’s orientation, and all rod tips low but set to stay above the water.

The back rods are the shortest, and the others step up in length from back to front. His most common rod length set-up consists of two 8-footers, two12s, two 16s and two 20s. He noted that every angler doesn’t need to go that extreme with lengths, but for guiding, he likes to maximize the spread of the baits to keep them away from one other and to cover the most water possible.

Every rod is generally rigged with a pair of Bobby Garland Stroll’Rs, attached with loop knots, 3 to 4 feet apart. He uses 6-pound-test high-vis line and considers the line color important for tracking how the lines are running to minimize tangling.

Jighead size varies based on the depth range he wants to work. If he wants to run baits in two different depth zones, he might have the lines on one side of the boat rigged with, say, a pair of 1/16-ounce jigs and those on the other side rigged with a 1/8- and a 1/16. All the lines on a given side are always weighted the same, though.

Chappell likes to start with a variety of colors on his lines to figure out the fish’s preferences, beginning mostly with the colors he “expects” to produce based on conditions and his experience, but including some different hues. Variances are from line to line. He likes to match the color of baits on a line to aid the patterning process.

Chappell gets the boat moving in the direction he wants to go before casting any lines, and then casts them out, starting with the back lines and working forward. He doesn’t measure distances, but for all, he makes what he dubs “a long country cast” to get baits well away from the boat.

Chappell will sometimes do a bit of looking with electronics before he starts trolling, especially if he hasn’t been out in recent days or if there has been a significant weather shift. Longline trolling is a mobile searching strategy, so he doesn’t need to lock in an exact spot.  However, he does want to work in general areas that crappie are using and likes to get an idea of depths crappie are holding in and suspended over and how they are relating to things like channel edges, pieces of cover and schools of bait.

That said, the lion’s share of the searching occurs while Chappell is actively pulling baits. He keeps his electronics running all the time, watching downscan, sidescan and even live sonar as he goes. Information he continually gains impacts his boat lines and speeds and sometimes causes him to change jighead sizes. The most important patterning information combines what he sees on the screen and how the fish respond to his baits.

Chappell’s total approach, in its simplest form, is to get all his lines in place and keep the boat moving at a modest speed through areas where he expects to find crappie. His default trolling speed, measured by GPS, is 1.2 mph. He’ll adjust that a bit, based on what the fish show him, but that is always the starting speed and is the speed he trolls the most.

Dependent on season, what he knows from recent outings, conditions and what electronics are showing, Chappell might start by working up a creek channel, follow a set depth in the lake’s main body or possibly work a variety of depths from a channel to well up on a flat and back.

Patterning is the difference maker. He always pays attention to whether the boat is turning or straight when fish hit, which side the fish hit on, channel orientation, and what is below in terms of fish, bottom make-up, bait and more. He also notes which baits get hit and thinks about colors – often changing baits on a different rod if one is getting the most bites to figure out whether the color, the rod position, or the weight of the jigheads is the difference maker.

A lot of baits can work for longline trolling, but for Chappell, nothing tops the tried-and-true Bobby Garland Stroll’R. He has relied on the Stroll’R for many years and believes it has the ideal profile and the right kicking/thumping action for longline trolling. He’ll experiment a lot with colors to pattern fish through the day and will vary jigheads, but except in an occasional situation that calls for downsizing, he seldom strays from Stroll’Rs when he trolls.

The Stroll’R, which is 2 1/2 inches long, begins with the same body shape as the iconic Baby Shad. Instead of tapering to a point, though, the tail flattens, makes a U-turn and ends with a small button tip. The result is a strong kicking action that sends out a lot of thump to draw fish from afar and the visual suggestion of a swimming baitfish. The Stroll’R is available in 27 colors.

Beyond jighead size and color, another key variable is that Chappell commonly adds is the flash of willowleaf blades to some of his offerings. That flash is easy to attain with Bobby Garland Head Turn’R Jigheads, which were introduced a couple of years ago. The Head Turn’R design uses twin willow blades that run on each side of the bait and are extremely well suited for longline trolling. The Head Turn’R Jigheads come in 1/8-, 1/16- and 1/32-ounce sizes in Pink, Chartreuse and Ghost.

• Crappie that hit trolling baits will almost always come to the surface initially. Keep them there with the rod held high and reel steadily to keep them out of other lines.
• Steady wins. Don’t pump the rod or get in a hurry. Reeling steadily at a moderate pace keeps tension on the line and vastly reduces the likeliness of a jigs pulling out of crappie’s soft mouths.
• Use a long-handled crappie net. If you’re using long rods to spread outside lines, a long-handled net is a worthwhile investment.
• With longer rods, don’t reel the fish too close to the rod tip. Stop reeling when the fish is about a rod’s length out and raise the rod and swing it behind you to guide the crappie to the net.