Crappie Candy By Al Campbell
What kid hasn’t caught a crappie on a jig suspended below a bobber?
That’s a deadly way to catch a mess of crappie anytime. It’s still the way
I do it when I take my grandsons fishing for these tasty panfish.
When I’m fishing alone or with another flyfisher, I like to use a fly rod to
chase crappie. It isn’t easy to cast a jig with a fly rod and somehow it just
doesn’t feel right to use a jig on a fly rod anytime, so I decided long ago
to convert some of my favorite crappie jigs into crappie flies. It wasn’t hard,
and the crappie seem to like the flies as good or maybe better than the jigs,
so I think I won this contest.
Crappie like to hang around submerged structure like boat docks, sunken
trees and old tree trunks that remain after a dam is built. Dropping a fly near
a good piece of structure and letting it sink often brings immediate strikes.
Since structure is a good place to get tangled up, be sure to use a rod and
leader stout enough to handle the task of turning a fish bent on the idea of
wrapping your leader around its favorite hiding place.
This fly can be tied in a variety of colors. I like chartreuse and fluorescent
green colors in the spring and yellow later in the summer. White is a bonus
color I almost always add because I have found it to be a trigger color on
nearly all my crappie flies. It must look more like something to eat if it has
white in it.
This fly is a combination of a clouser minnow and a shwapf. If you have read
my beginning fly tying series, you know about the shwapf, and most fly tyers
know about clouser minnows. Both are killer flies in their own right, but the
combination is crappie candy. They just seem to like to eat these flies.
Materials
Hook: Straight eye streamer hook, size 8 to 12, any brand will work.
Thread: Fluorescent green Danville Flymaster Plus.
Tail: White marabou.
Body: Fluorescent green wool yarn and chartreuse crystal flash
Wing: White bucktail.
Eyes: Silver or brass bead chain (the kind you find on light fixtures)
Tying Steps:
- Secure a set of bead chain eyes to the hook with figure 8 wraps as shown.
A drop of super glue will keep them from shifting on the hook.
Originally published May 28, 2001 on Fly Anglers Online by Al Campbell.