Free Shipping: Orders Over $35

Featured Stories

bobber fishing for crappie

Pro Bobber Fishing Tactics for Pre-Spawn Crappie

Pre-spawn crappie fishing delivers some of the best action of the year, and the fish’s behavior lends itself ideally to fishing and jig beneath a bobber.

A childhood thrill returns to Terry Blankenship every spring when pre-spawn crappie fishing heats up at Lake of the Ozarks. The Missouri guide and tournament angler recalls how excited he would get watching a bobber zip underwater when he was a kid, bobber fishing for crappie. Blankenship continues to experience that excitement today, albeit with a more sophisticated bobber setup.

“We all love our bobbers,” Blankenship said. “Bobber fishing for crappie is a little bit like topwater fishing for bass. It’s just something, if you have done it a bunch, you are kind of focused on that bobber, and when you are fishing with artificial lures instead of minnows you have to be pretty observant and pretty quick with it. It kind of keeps you a little tense if you feel like you are in a position to get a bite. It winds up being pretty much like the excitement of a topwater bite because of the way crappie sometimes hit it and knock it to where it goes down so fast, but other times they just barely nudge it or turn it sideways.  That’s why you really have to pay attention to it.”

Read more

Crappie on Bobby Garland Mayfly

Bobby Garland Announces New Mayfly Crappie Bait

Learn about the Mayfly, an innovative new crappie bait to be released by Bobby Garland this summer.

Great fishing secrets are hard to keep, and word has gotten out that a new Bobby Garland bait – The Mayfly – is on schedule to “hatch” in July. So rather than letting rumors confuse the facts, here are full details about this cool creation in advance of its summer availability.

The Mayfly is a 2.25-inch insect-profile design that stays true to Bobby Garland’s reputation of product innovation specific to crappie fishing. This new soft-plastic bait is loaded with features appealing to multiple senses crappie rely on for feeding.

Read more

slab white crappie

5 Ways to Catch Spring Crappie

Learn how five expert crappie anglers are catching fish right now and how to catch spring crappie on your home waters.

It seems the weather and crappie spawning behavior team up every spring to drive anglers crazy. That’s certainly happening now, as we hit mid-April.

So, I reached out to five “fish almost every day” anglers from South Carolina to Oklahoma for real time reports on what the crappie are doing and how each angler is catching fish. You’ll see how varied the approaches can be for catching the same black and white crappie that we all pursue in our favorite spots.  

Perhaps, 2022 is the year for you to try something new. You’ll never go wrong in borrowing knowledge and tactics from any of these five crappie experts.

Read more

spring crappie

Understanding the Crappie Spawn

Learning more about spring crappie behavior related to the spawn can help you catch more fish.

The crappie spawn has major impact on fish behavior during spring and opens some of the year’s best opportunities for catching crappie from shallow water. Most anglers know that much. Where questions arise are with details about things like when the fish move up, how long they hang around, the types of areas they favor, and, consequently, how all that impacts spring crappie fishing strategies.

With such questions in mind, we turned to Josh Johnston, Fisheries Supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Resources, and Gary Dollahon, brand manager for Bobby Garland Crappie Baits. Significantly, both also speak from the perspective of being avid crappie anglers.

Read more

Spring crappie catch

Navigating the Chaos of Spring Crappie Fishing

Spring weather can throw curveballs to crappie fishermen. Here’s how to adjust and catch crappie despite ever-changing conditions.

There’s truth to an old English Proverb that brings hope this time of year to the hearts of crappie fishermen everywhere. . . “No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.”

Sure, you can catch crappie throughout the year, but there’s something extra nice about spring crappie fishing. The weather is warming, the trees are beginning to bud, and the slabs are hungry and moving up to spawn.

But it’s not all a bed of roses. Spring crappie fishing also including rising water, falling water, bizarre cold fronts and those ever-present in-like-a-lion winds that can blow even the best-planned trips up onto the bank.

Read more

spring crappie fishing

How Expert Anglers Keep Up with Spring Crappie

Warming water temperatures prompt crappie migrations toward spawning areas. Learn how to find and catch spring crappie.

When crappie initiate their move toward spawning areas, anglers from Oklahoma to Connecticut head to the lake!

The primary pre-spawn and spawn trigger is water temperature. Across the country, crappie pre-spawn movements begin when water temperatures approach 50 degrees, with crappie moving to staging areas close to spawning flats and banks. When the shallows maintain a temperature close to 60 degrees for several days, bedding may begin. Nests are constructed moderately firm bottoms, generally in protected areas. This yearly ritual may begin as early as February in the Southern states or as late as early July in states along the Canadian border.

Read more

crappie fishing catch

What Do I See? Your Guide to Interpreting Live Sonar

Learn how to make the best use of live sonar technology to improve your crappie fishing efficiency and catch more fish.

Early “Fish finders” were used primarily to find fish, as the term suggests, and to determine bottom depths and locate structure. Over time, technology has evolved, creating far clearer and more detailed pictures and many types of views and allowing anglers to determine bottom make-ups and find both structure and fish far more effectively

The latest electronics technology, live sonar, makes it far easier for anglers to recognize fish species, target specific fish and see how the fish react to lure presentations. It is highly popular for crappie fishing and extremely helpful if you know how make the best use of it.

Live sonar technology, which reveals high-resolution images of fish swimming and responding to lures, is available now via Garmin’s Panoptix LiveScope, Lowrance’s Active Target and Humminbird’s MEGA Live Imaging. For Dustin McDaniel, an Oklahoma tournament angler and guide (GFB Outdoors Guide Service, 417-437-5047), the ability to interpret what he is seeing on his Garmin 1222 unit with its Panoptix LiveScope transducer, has become a game-changer.

Read more

crappie on Bobby Garland Slab Slay'R

How to Find and Catch Crappie in Open Water

Learn how four crappie guides target deep-water crappie during late winter.

The evolution of electronics with live sonar has changed how many anglers catch crappie during winter. Now crappie anglers with live sonar chase roamers as they scan for the larger crappie scattered over deeper water.

Before you stop reading this article because you don’t have live sonar, Bobby Garland Pro Barry Morrow is going to explain how to catch crappie this time of year without those tools, but first let’s talk about catching roamers.

Read more

Crappie Guide Barry Morrow

Crappie Guides and How to Shorten the First Time Learning Curve

Hiring a crappie guide can be extremely beneficial and more cost-efficient than you might imagine. We spoke with several veteran guides about how to make the most of a guided fishing trip.

The start of a phone call once had crappie guide Brad Chappell wondering if he had unknowingly caused real problems. The caller said her husband had spent $6,000 on crappie gear and wanted to know why Chappell was “making” him buy all that stuff. Her husband, a fairly recent guide client of Chappell’s had been calling regularly since the trip to ask specifics about Chappell’s gear – one week about electronics, the next about rod holders, the next about baits… But Chappell hadn’t TOLD him to buy anything!

Then, with a smile in her voice that Chappell could hear, the caller said she was really calling to thank him because while her husband really had spent that much money, the two of them were truly enjoying crappie fishing together!

Read more