Day in and day out, crappie see a lot of crankbaits go by in noted slab-producing reservoirs like Enid, Sardis, and Grenada. Anglers have been known to carry a rainbow assortment of colors, even painting baits with quick-dry paint or nail polish on the water to get that little bit extra flash or color to catch a crappie’s eye.
B’n’M pro Kent Driscoll, a noted crankbait angler, decided to borrow a page from the Walleye Angler’s Playbook to see if he couldn’t move to the front of the line.
“The walleye guys up north are the godfathers of trolling to catch fish,” said Driscoll. “A lot of what we know and learned about trolling crankbaits for crappie came from tactics those guys have used for years — trolling plates, kicker motors, speed charts, planer boards … you name it.”
When Driscoll began tearing apart northern walleye tactics, the use of a trolling harness caught his attention. Walleye anglers would thread a small, brightly colored spinner blade above the bait. The combination of color, flash, and vibration frequently elicited strikes from stubborn walleye, but would it work for crappie?
“I’ll be the first to admit this is not a magic bullet,” said Driscoll. “But I’ve compared how many bites, how many fish I’ve caught on a slow day using the harness to not using it. I’m becoming more and more a believer that this will catch a few more fish on certain days. In a tournament, a few more fish, a couple more ounces in weight can spell the difference between a check and no-check.”
Driscoll’s harness set up
Driscoll’s crankbait harness involves a barrel swivel tied inline about 2 1/2 feet above the crankbait. Above the swivel, he threads a 6 mm colored bead, a spinner blade clevis, and two more similar or slightly larger beads. His base blade is a chartreuse No. 2 Colorado blade. He found that the larger blades require more force to turn without use of a wire shank.
“I just started experimenting to find what worked best for me,” said Driscoll. “There’s a lot of different styles, colors, and sizes to try.”
