Okay,

I love the taste of Crappie. But I have only caught them the boring way -- with minnows on a regular rod and setting the depth.

Can you catch them on the fly? I bought a sinking line (last 25 feet sinks), so I was thinking a small Clauser and my sinking line might work to get to the right depth, and then the speed of the retrieval would set my depth.

But it is always more fun to catch fish on top action.... Any thoughts?

yes, brazos, it can be done. have been catching a lot of small crappie at dalworthington gardens here in town, on a fly. sinking lines, small clouser, or i use micro jigs, will work. just have to find them, and work the fly at the speed they like. let us know how you do.
later, troutbum

Crappie like jigs a lot. If you can get something that looks like a jig, you will be in business. They also love minnows. I have seen a fly that looked like a minnow....called a gummy minnow or something like that. I am sure they would like a woolly bugger.

They also love worms, forgot to say that. But then again, don't all fish?

I've had good luck catching crappie on a small white wooly bugger. Silver hook and beadhead, white tail, white chenille or ice chenille body, wrapped with grizzly hackle. Size 10 or 12, and keep the tail short.

I wonder if the worms are by smell r sight, cuz there's always this...

The only thing thats stopped me is those dang bluegill.....

I have good luck with a floating line, strike indicator, and a hare's ear nymph. I move it just enough to keep the floating line, well, floating.

Robin that looks like a San Juan worm, and I don't know if it would work for sure, but I would SURE TRY IT OUT! Yes I have wondered about that too. I would think it would be best to put a little weight on it and fish it off the bottom though.... But you could make a bigger worm, and make it look more like a nightcrawler...if so it could be fished higher. This is just a guess though on my part. Sometimes fish are fickle......lol....as we all know.

This leaves me with lots of questions:
1) Any pics of microjigs?
2) What is a strike indicator?
3) Any pics of "small white wooly bugger. Silver hook and beadhead, white tail, white chenille or ice chenille body, wrapped with grizzly hackle. Size 10 or 12, and keep the tail short" would be welcome...
4) All the small jig-like lures I have are weighted pretty good (more than a Clauser). You use these with the floating or sinking fly line?

Any of these hare's ear nymph's would work? What about color? These look a lot like my trout lures I use in NC. I have a number of these.

http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=hare's%20ear%20nymph&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

Question 2. Here's a link to a good indicator you can make http://globalflyfisher.com/fishbetter/indicators/ You can really use anything that floats, you can see, and isn't too heavy. I use tiny plastic bobbers sometimes. Don't laugh, they work and are castable.

In the next post, you ask which hare's ear. Any of the ones pictured are good. I usually use one that looks a lot like the first one or a bead headed one. Yep, they came out of my old trout flies. Work great on crappie and bluegill. The trick is top move them as little as possible.

a few weeks ago, I caught a ton of crappie on a clouser minnow. They were in shallow water so it was a little easier, but I would guess if you can get it in front of them, they would take it in deeper water too

I've caught a lot of small crappie recently on micro jigs. My bigger crappie have been on clousers or cats whiskers.

Folks

Having never targeted crappie on the fly, would you say it's mostly how and where you present the fly? It seems like crappie have a different feeding strategy than their bass or bluegill cousins.