Upsizing Fall Baits

The fish are feeding heavily now, with the water temperatures continuing to drop and that will allow you to use a bigger profile bait for catching better sized fish. Fish are preparing for the coming of winter and that means eating often and lots of competition.

For crappies, jig and plastics are working very well right now and by also upsizing the plastics size, this keeps the smaller fish off the bait and more opportunities at those larger fish. Starting out with 2-inch-long plastics with paddle tails, these are minnow imitators and draw in a number of fish to the bait.

Couple of ways for fishing these are, you can vertical jig them and cast them out, count down, or start reeling slowly right away and pay attention to how the fish are striking and imitate that going forward. Tungsten jigs in 1/16 or 1/8 oz sizes are working well as they fall faster and get into the school of fish much quicker.

The crappies will be in schools and that means that some of these may have a large number of fish. Once these are located, staying with their movements is key and with that, can have fish on nearly every cast. This time of year, with the fish feeding, larger baits are more intriguing and why not offer that to them.