Have you ever seen crappie only take plastic lures or feather jigs? I've noticed color seems to make more of a difference. What's your experience?

Not plastic vs feathers but a few yrs back my buddy was catching three to my one on the same color jig. His was maribou to my feathers. I changed to maribou and it was pretty much even after that.

I have only fished feathers. I have plastics, but have never really used them. Have fished feather vs minnows, and don't see much a difference there, at least not for me. Always use a crappie nibble. Color does make a difference for me.

-danny

In my many years of chasin them White Perch, I've gone from being a minner dunker & just dabbling at jigs for the first 30 till around 1998 when an old guy taught me how to fish tube jigs under the Lake Palestine bridge. At that point, I parked my minner gear and loaded up on plastics of all kinds & really caught a LOT of fish! In the Fall of 2010 I think it was, Crazy Angler introduced the Slab Bandit & allowed me to field test a bag of the Texas Toast bait & from that point, I put aside all my boxes & bags of tubes & loaded up on every color & size of Slab Bandit & caught a bunch of fish! Then my wife got sick & I had a lot of idle time so, I took up jig tying with hackle feathers & at first I would interchange between the Bandits & my hand tie's, probably due to my own impatience rather than the demands of the fish. Now, after about 2 years of fishing my hand tied jigs exclusively, I can say that I catch probably as many fish now as I ever have BUT, in the last year I have caught more big fish than ever before. That's not taking away from that Texas a Toast Slab Bandit when in the Fall of 2011 I caught my PB, a 2.9# slab & the following Fall, Frank Griffith & I caught a 7 fish bag that went over 15#. Even at that, I have caught possibly more & definitely bigger fish on feather jigs. Now as to the "either or" question, usually when I'm catchin on feathers, minner dunkers are probably catchin too. The opposite is also true, if folks are catchin with minner's, I'm fairly sure I can catch some on my jigs. That's been my experience anyway.

It really comes down to confidence. I think there are places for both and both catch fish equally as good. I feel that feather jigs can make a difference in the winter or early spring when the fish are more sluggish.

Tks, Pepop! Great post. I am sure this we'll always be a question feathers or plastic. I use both but do not have a preference.

I just let the fish decide

I fish mostly in the crappie house here on Lake Eddleman. There are days that plastic is better and there are days that the hand tied feather jigs are better. There are some times that neither will produce and
minnows are the only thing they will bite. I do pay attention to which the crappie are biting and I hope
I am smart enough to change from plastic to jigs or vice versa if the fish have a preference. But I won't
fish minnows period.

Johnny

I feel left out, my jigs are fur and hair....

Just curious, why won't you fish minnows?

Plastics for me. Like Vernon, tubes first got me hooked on plastics, and were my main bait for years. But I kept hearing from people who thought that the newer straight tail baits were a more consistent producer than tubes, when it comes to subtle action baits, so I eventually got around to trying them. I experimented with a bunch of different ones, and was soon hooked.

Bait tinker that I am, it was only a matter of time before I started injecting my own. I've been doing that for a little over a year and I really love the plastic shad baits I'm making now. The only baits I've found that I think are even better than mine are the ones that Lane makes.

I believe that the time of year and bait availability dictates which will work better. As you have heard several say here that feather and I personally tie marabou on my jigs works better or a thin profile bait on a slower bite. Clarity of water has a difference to account for as well. For vibration in stained to muddy I'd give the nod to plastics for the vibration factor. Clearer from light stained to clear I'd go with marabou/chenille or a shad/minnow colored plastic. It depends, I feel largely, on how long the crappie have to look at their offering. Since we don't know that... Nothing beats matching the hatch for the size of shad/minnows in my opinion. Check archived pdf's of shad/forage base surveys on the particular lake you are fishing and note the time of year. Keep a running record and review it. You'll know what to go to from there. Shad usually dominate in the south with some shad kills at times because of temperatures but not a lot and are the main forage base for many species throughout the year.

There are definitely times when one will out fish the other. I use both. The main difference I see is rate of fall. The hand tied jig of the same weight will fall slower since the feathers and chenille produce a higher drag coefficient in the water than plastic. The tail action of marabou is also very tantalizing to crappie. Most of the time, that slow falling hand tied jig is hard for a crappie to resist.

If I couldn't go to the grocery store and buy food to feed my family and I was having to fish for food then
I might/would consider using minnows. As it is when I fish for either bass or crappie its is me trying to
fool the fish into biting my artificial lure. Whether I buy the lure or I build it myself, to me it is
a real accomplishment to fool one of Mother Nature's fish/animals/birds.

Johnny