Recently I friend told me of his success trolling small crankbaits for bass and panfish. Finally I went with him and we trolled medium dive crankbaits no bigger than 2 1/4".
I used a 6' light action Duck Commander rod ($19), a 100A Daiwa spincast reel with Kastking 8#/ 2# diam braid. I ran the Minn Kota at speed #2 (a fast walk) and the rod lay in the boat 45 degrees toward the stern. Man did we catch nice crappie and perch, though the bass small in the hour and a half we fished before going home.

During the day we beat the banks and the humps, but only sunfish were caught along with 3" bass and a few 9" crappie.But the quality fish were in the middle of the elongated lake probably near the old creek channel before the lake was dammed which averaged 8'. A Rapala Risto Rap caught all of my fish; my partner used small Big O's. Now I'm excited to try trolling some other waters if we can't find fish casting to target areas.

I usually troll kayaking out to and back from where I want to fish.
Almost always get a couple of bonus fish that way.
Caught my pb catfish, 14lb, on a jointed xrap that way.

I haven't caught a crappie trolling yet, but I troll on any body of water I'm not familiar with, its a great way of finding active fish.

I use to be able to catch crappie trolling fairly consistently on a rattle trap running my boat at idle in April. I would fish the ledges of a river channel and figured post spawn crappie were moving back to main lake and chasing shad. They get pretty aggressive post spawn.

In other states, we have trolled cranks behind planer boards with pretty good to great success. For some reason, we can not get Texas crappie to hit them using the same techniques we use out of the state. Gonna keep tweaking things a little here and there to try and find a way to get crappie to bite trolled crank baits.

crappie love splatter back bandits trolled at 1.8 mph , firetiger bandits in the fall

I was hesitant to mention this really, but I troll rattle traps for white bass and hybrids and stripers all the time. ive been wanting to reply here for a week about it but it took a while to get up the nerve about it. to tell you the truth im surprised this question is still posted. I read in the announcement section here (now I cant find it) that many people have been banned from here for trolling. I can tell you this though, I see others do it all the time with those downrigging things on the back of their boats

I trolled Lake Fork for three 8 hour days back in the first of August and caught two crappie. Not sure what I was doing wrong but I dang sure know what I won’t be doing again lol

works well especially in the late evening when the crappie come of their trees to find something to eat. Early in the year a small jig is better but once the bait is bigger crankbaits work if trolled about 1.5 mph.

So the trolling that guys get banned for, get a "time out" from the fishing forum, is not the same as the trolling you do when you pull a bait behind your boat.

Trolling is defined as creating discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people by posting inflammatory or off-topic messages in an online community. Thats different from the one where you pull the lure behind the boat.

Are you trolling me now Bryan?

And yes trolling works great for crappie! I like to troll the bandits that run about 10feet. The biggest crappie I have ever seen was almost 20 inches, no BS guys, and was caught trolling a 10xd. It was HUGE.