Paint Shop Spotlight: Rebel Pop R in Rebel Shad - Bait School Bite Spec
When: Summer/Fall
Where: Anywhere bass may roam
The exclusive Pop R in Rebel Shad was built to imitate all types of baitfish and become the only popping topwater color you need tied on this summer!
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.
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.
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.
Learn about the approach the delivered the Lake Chickamauga Elite Series win to Bassmaster Classic champion Jason Christie.
No surprise here. A War Eagle Jiu-Jigsu jig matched with a YUM Craw Chunk was one
the key lures Jason Christie used to win the April 7-10 Elite Series event on Lake Chickamauga.
That’s the same jig and trailer that was one of the two primary lures he used to win the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Harwell last month. It’s also the same jig Christie put near the top of his list Top 10 Late Spring Bass Bait Picks AND Top 10 Early Spring Bass Bait Picks prior to that.
At Chickamauga, Christie also used a 1/2-ounce single Colorado BOOYAH Covert Series Spinnerbait in Blue/White/Chartreuse with a YUM Swim’n Dinger as a trailer, and a bladed jig. Christie designed the Covert Series, hand picking components and every size, blade configuration and color combination in the series based on a lifetime of customizing and fishing spinnerbaits and the collective knowledge of Christie, his father and his uncles.
Paint Shop Spotlight: Bandit 100 in Bois Darc Beauty- Bait School Bite Spec
When: Early Winter
Where: Shallow water Rivers/Lakes (Ross Barnett, Caddo Lake, Coosa River)
The perfect crankbait for shallow, dirty river water!
Spring awakens exciting topwater bass fishing opportunities, and a Pop-R is ideal for igniting the action in many situations.
Spring means different things to different people. Some think about baseball, azaleas blooming or the Masters. In the minds of many bass fishermen, springtime is Rebel Pop-R time.
Bassmaster Elite Series pro Stetson Blaylock is one such angler. He has fished a Rebel Pop-R during the pre-spawn and spawning periods for many years, and a few springs back a Pop-R delivered him 1st and 2nd place finishes in consecutive Elite Series events.
It’s not that a Rebel Pop-R doesn’t produce excellent action all summer and through the fall. It does. Spring has extra virtues that make it especially good, though, along with being the time when the Pop-R bite first heats up each year.
Learn when topwater bass fishing calls for a finesse approach and how to downsize effectively to catch more fish.
I’ve fished the Zara Puppy for many years. It stands as one of my favorite topwater bass fishing lures for catching smallmouths and spots from creeks and small rivers. I’ve rarely tied one on to target bass in large rivers or lakes, though, because the Pup lacks the weight to cast efficiently on the tackle I favor for those settings and because the hooks and hardware are a bit small for bigger bass.
I typically choose a Super Spook Jr when I want to walk the dog for bass with a finesse topwater lure in bigger water, and often the Junior size provides the perfect answer. At times, though, I’ve wished I’d had even more of a finesse topwater lure that still could be cast efficiently and that was made as tough as the Super Spook Jr.
Seemingly, I was not alone. The folks at Heddon Lures heard about the need for such a topwater bass fishing lure enough times over the years to put engineers to work designing a new Spook. The result was the creation of the Super Spook Boyo, which is only 3 inches long but is built tough like the other Super Spooks.
Understanding the purpose behind various crappie bait profiles and how designs affect bait movement can help you choose the best crappie fishing bait for every situation.
The sea of crappie baits available today can make lure selection a daunting task. Aside from all the brands, shapes and body styles, there are the colors … lots and lots of colors.
Having been responsible for the Bobby Garland Crappie Baits lineup for the past 16 years, I’ve seen countless blank stares and fielded scores of frustrated questions from tackle show attendees across the country, with many asking, “Where do I start?”
Although I don’t know the background for every crappie lure out there, I do for the development of every Bobby Garland product. Perhaps you’ll find some of the insight shared here helpful in making bait selections for your style of crappie fishing.
