crappies on a flyrod

[gofishseven]

has anyone any experience or even tips of fishin for crappies on a fly rod.  i was watchin someone today pull big gills......or more likely crappies one after another.    He was stripping line pretty quickly.  I think he was using either a streamer or maybe even a wolly bugger??   Whatever he was using was working!  maybe 6 feet of water.  30 feet from the rushes.  I was a good hundred yards away.   Good for him.  He was getting some nice, fish.

[junior88]

The biggest crappie I ever caught was on a fly rod using a muddler minnow. Wooly buggers are a great choice also. In the summer poppers are very fun on the bass and pans.

[MickeyFinn]

 I haven't targeted them a whole bunch on the fly rod but the dozen or so times I have  Woolly Buggers  were dynamite. I would just cast out as far as I could over a school of them let it sink to the bottom, strip it back at a medium speed. pauseing every so often to let it sink a bit again. and usually on the strip after a pause BANG. 

[Jimmy]

When the crappie are in shallow in mid-Spring (late April/early May) on the lake that I live on I sight fish them with the 3wt and beadhead nymphs like Copper Johns or Hare's Ears.  They seem to attack them with abandon and don't even investigate them like they do (here) the Buggers and Black Leeches I used to toss.

If you can see the school or know they are on their beds- a heavy nymph seems to really crank them up!

The big ones are a lot of fun on a 5wt, but they are a total BLAST on the 3wt!!!

[chimo]

My experiences are similar to jimmy's.  I was fishing crappies on fallen timber in PA and the fish wouldn't even move when my baits ( soft plastics, hair jigs, spinners, worms, etc.)  came near them, but a couple of gentlemen came by in a boat with their flyrods and you should have seen those crappies go flying after their hooks.  They went for being lethargic just kinda sitting around to chasing their flies down.  I learned my lesson and did the same thing the next spring.  The only reason I don't fish that way more is I prefer the spinning rod.  good fishin

chimo

[Rebelfisher]

we just got back from a local lake a few days ago...I was using the flyrod, my buddy, spinning gear. I outfished him 3:1. we ended up with 34 gills and 2 nice 13" calico's. (calico's on the fly) I was using a hare's ear nymph w/beadhead. It was one after another! goin out today in a few minutes.

[winchester 88]

I have a book on Crappie fishing which speaks of using a short(3-4ft) section of floating fly line tied to your spinning rod monoline and then a leader tied to the end of that and using a small jig(1/64th-1/32nd o.z.) tied to the leader.
The fly line acts as a float and supposedly the crappie love to hit the jig as it slowly falls thru the water at the end of the fly line.
 Also I was thinking why couldn't you rig up one of the tiny float n fly style bobbers with the weighted flies that you use on the flyrod and fish them the same way that the bass fishermen fish the float and fly rigs?

Winchester 88