Put A Cork In It

For Brad Whitehead, the appeal of sideways crappie fishing has a lot more applications than simply drifting with jigs trailing behind the boat. The guide admits that he catches plenty of big crappie in the conventional sense with side-pulling, but it doesn’t end there.

“Pickwick isn’t a muddy lake like some of the other big name lakes across Mississippi,” said Whitehead. “During the winter, we can get some really gin clear water and that makes it hard to fish anything less than 20 feet deep on a sunny day without worrying about the boat shadow spooking fish. That’s when I started experimenting with some the balsa wood corks that Lindy Fishing Tackle sent me to try out and I hit on the idea of side pulling corks so that I could get lines further out away from the boat while working shallow water.”

Whitehead likes to arrange the corks, usually eight or nine of them if he’s fishing with a party of two anglers, in a wide arc, while gently bumping the boat along over the flat. If the bite is slow, he may even halt the progress of the boat and let the cork rigs sit, dancing right in front of the fish’s nose in order to tempt a bite.

“I use a Thill slip cork and tie a bobber stop about 12-16 feet up the line,” said Whitehead. “The average depth of the good stump flats at winter pool is about 18 feet. That puts my bottom jig right at the top of the stump and the top jig a foot or so above that. I like two 1/16 or two 1/8 ounce jigs so I have to have the right size cork to float them. I fan cast the cork rigs, space the rods out across the side of the boat and start easing across the flat sideways with the corks 50 to 60 feet behind the boat. Once the boat passes, the jigs may not get to that spot for several minutes and that’s plenty of time to get a fish to bite.”