Horizontal Fishing: Baits That Work Magic
Story and Photos By Vic Attardo

Basically, there are two ways to catch crappie — lying down or standing up. Well, it would seem that way, as all the effective presentations can be divided into either vertical or horizontal techniques.

Vertical crappie fishing consists of a straight up-and-down style of fishing. It's done primarily with jigs and live bait lowered, with or without a bobber, directly into the water. By using multiple hooks or adjusting the depth below a bobber, vertical techniques can cover the water column from nearly top to bottom.

The other broad style of crappie fishing, the horizontal presentations, rely on a trajectory-based movement of the lure or bait. Horizontal tactics also can employ jigs and live offerings, or they can rely on hard baits such as crankbaits or small spinnerbaits presented on either a level or arced plane. Like vertical presentations, horizontal tactics are also widely variable.

It would be nice to declare the dedicated use of either vertical or horizontal offerings based on varying conditions such as seasons, water temperature, weather or that old standard — the "mood of the fish." But, according to many crappie experts, there are no hard rules for this type of fishing.

Kasper Gaylord, a North Carolina veteran of many years and waters, says his decision to fish lying down or standing up depends on how well he slept the night before.

"Sure, there is more to it than that, but not much," he notes. "I use sideways (horizontal) presentations when the crappie are either deep or shallow, and I use straight up-and-down stuff when they're either shallow or deep. If everybody else is fishing a bait below a bobber, I may fish a crankbait or slow-roll a bladed jig. Or I may just fish bait below a bobber."

Iaconelli's Double- Duty Plastics
When New Jersey's Mike Iaconelli isn't out winning a Bassmaster Classic or being named the B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year, he likes to take a break from the pressure by doing a little crappie fishing.

Iaconelli doesn't get to pursue crappie often these days, but he showed he still knows a thing or two about catching the Garden State's surprisingly slab-sided calicos.

As quick as an Iaconelli gyration, he'll turn from landing a hefty bass, look at his bait and pronounce it ready for a crappie bite. Or he'll keep a number of chewed-up, cut-down soft plastics on the deck of his boat and hold them for a crappie spot. When he's ready for the silver-sided fish, he performs his crappie catching with a horizontal presentation.

"Crappie will go after a big-bass bait because they are an aggressive fish," Iaconelli says. "But everyone knows their mouths are smaller than a bass's, so anglers use smaller baits. The thing is, you can use some of the soft plastics the bass have already destroyed and catch some awfully big crappie."

While catching some bass from a small Jersey lake last spring, Iaconelli was intermittently using a jighead worm. The long, soft plastic was fixed to an offset-bend hook with a unified ball jighead and the line-tie at the top of the ball. The plastic color of the day was a greenish peppery thing. Even when bass were his specific target, the jig-and-worm was thrown on a spinning rod with light line, which made it a perfect outfit for line-sensitive crappie.

Along a shallow weedbed, Iaconelli had a bass bite off the majority of the worm when he spun the boat and cast the chopped-down bait to deeper water outside the grass line. He had spotted a school of fish on the sonar before coming onto the thicker vegetation.

With a flip of the spinning rod, he sent the shortened bait into the last known area of the school. Clicking over the bail, he momentarily held the rod tip high, then began a series of short, smooth pumps designed to make the bait rise and fall. He finished the fourth pump, letting the bait settle toward the bottom, then jerked back hard to set the hook. Surprisingly, a flashy black slab came slapping to the surface and was brought to the boat.
"I thought they were crappie," Iaconelli said, holding the fish.

He performed the same horizontal retrieve with the reduced bait and nailed a second crappie.

"If you want, we can do that all morning," he said with the legendary Iaconelli grin.
Iaconelli first started using reduced plastics for crappie while learning to bass fish on such waters as Fairview Lake in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Here, he'd often have crappie attack his shortened soft plastics. At that time, the hooks he used for largemouth were often too big for papermouths. But as he added finesse fishing to his bassin' repertoire, using smaller size 1/0 or No. 1 hooks, he caught more crappie. Now when he wants to land a few panfish, he goes back to this experience.

Iaconelli's extremely simple double-duty method is to either have a bass bite off a sizeable portion of a worm or thin soft plastic or bite it off himself. The shortened worm is kept on the finesse jighead after a bass attack or threaded onto a small jig if he has stashed some of the slashed softies for later use.

The beauty of the tactic is that Iaconelli doesn't need special crappie equipment for this work. Because the jighead has heft — 3/16- to ¼-ounce ball jigs are the standard — Iaconelli can use the same 7-foot finesse rod he employs for bass.

The shortened bait, which ends just microns beyond the bend of the hook, is the key, along with the bouncing horizontal presentation.

"It looks like a minnow as much as anything," Iaconelli says. "When you bring it bounding through a school or in places where isolated crappie hang out, it's a perfect bait. There's no mystery to it at all."

Bladed Jigs
There are many ways to horizontally skin a crappie, and one of the best is to roll a bladed jig. Ron Tallman of Deep Blue Waters Lures uses his SuperGlo Spin Flyer to nail ice-out crappie in his Minnesota home waters.

"Just after ice-out, the crappie are very active," Tallman says. "The trick is to actually retrieve the Spin Flyer at a fast speed."

Cold ice-out water and a speedy bait seem incongruous, but Tallman claims the tactic works well, catching crappie as they move close to shore.

The SuperGlo Spin Flyer is a clothespin-type jig spinner with a Colorado blade and a marabou tail behind a fuzzy grub body. The jig itself is ball-shaped with very large eyes. Tallman fishes it plain or with a small minnow.

Through March and April, Minnesota's lake waters transcend from the low 40s to the low 50s. Held deep by the long winter ice, the calicos move into the shallows as fast as melting allows. Ice-out on one of Tallman's favorite waters, Little Pine Lake, usually occurs around April 1, and the crappie fishing is at its peak by the middle of the month.

Tallman prefers to cast beside freshening weedlines in 3 feet of water or less.

"I make a cast of some 20 to 30 feet because I like to stay away from the fish so I don't spook them," he says. "After that, I make a steady, straight retrieve."

He uses a 6-foot light-action rod with 4-pound test line. Despite the overbearing presence of big pike in the water, the line is connected directly to the bait with no leader.

Using the Spin Flyer in the shallows, Tallman does not offer a stop-and-go retrieve or put much action in the bait. After all, it's still cold water. Later in the season, when the crappie suspend over deep water, Tallman varies the retrieve speeds. Typically, he'll find suspended crappie hanging 15 feet down over 30 feet of water. In this scenario, his tactic calls for more finesse.

"I cast it on a long line, typically 30 feet, and let the bait drop," he explains.

With the helicopter action of the Colorado blade, Tallman estimates the Spin Flyer drops about 1 foot per second.

"If the crappie are suspended halfway to the bottom, I let it drop 10 to 15 seconds, and then I begin the retrieve," he adds.

Tallman might retrieve slow, medium or fast, depending on the season and the mood of the fish. He often finds the ice-out and seasonally suspended crappie on lakes like Little Pine with dark tannin water. His favorite Spin Flyer sizes for this work are the 1/16- and a new 1/32-ounce bait made with a wiggle tail and a ball at the end of the tail instead of the marabou feather.

His favorite colors for dark water are four chartreuse shades — JH-1, 2, 5 and 8. His baits don't skimp on colors. On the rainbow Spin Flyer, there are five glow-paint colors, which is enough to interest just about any cold-water crappie.

Deep Blue Waters Lures also has a bait for deep horizontal fishing. The Woolly Bully is a propeller-driven jig with an eye large enough to thread a rope, let alone a fine-diameter crappie line.

The lure also features a tapered jighead, a plastic grub body and a marabou tail. In addition, the propeller blade has an off-plane twist with rounded holes on either side of the blade. The holes enable water to pass through the blade, which allows the propeller to spin faster. Combining the pivoted blade, tapered jighead and fluffy tail, the Woolly Bully has a straight, quick action that makes a slight disturbance as it's retrieved. And it's all for horizontal fishing.

Tallman works the Woolly Bully with a bouncing, sliding retrieve as he pulls it along the bottom. Again, he makes a distance cast, but this lure is allowed to hit the bottom. Once the jig makes contact, he lifts it off the lake floor with a sweep of the rod tip and several cranks of the reel.

"I reel it up for about 3 seconds, then I stop the retrieve and let it drop again," Tallman says.

He continues the retrieval action across the bottom until either getting a strike or reaching the boat. This tactic works for crappie that are holding low in the water column.
"Strikes often occur as the bait is falling," Tallman says.

In a scenario for suspended fish, Tallman works the Woolly Bully through the hovering school and gives the bait a big bounce.

"If the fish are suspended, I get the jig above them with a horizontal cast, then I drop it through the school," he notes.

After the jig makes a timed fall through the crappie pack, he raises the rod and cranks to lift the bait. Basically, it's a succession of deep jigging waves going through the calicos. No surprise that strikes often take place on the drop.

Tallman finds this horizontal tactic with the active Woolly Bully useful in clear-water conditions. On Rabbit Lake in Crosby, Minn., he uses a number of green shades spiced with red or orange. His top picks are the 1/15-ounce, WB1, 2 and 3. The latter has a lime-and-orange face with a burnt-orange plastic body and a marabou tail.

Whether you use dedicated baits like the Woolly Bully or Spin Flyer, or remnants of bass-sized soft plastics on jigheads, horizontal presentations can put more crappie in the boat — where they can lie down in the cooler.