On November 10th, 2022, Bill, aka Crappie Bot and myself went crappie fishing at West Branch State Park. The morning started off a little breezy and cool. Bill drove his boat to the west end of the lake, and we started fishing small brush piles in 7 to 9 feet of water. Today was going to be a research and design day to find out how we could use Home – J Bro’s Lures (jbroslures.com) in different ways to target crappies. We were using Garmin LiveScope™ Sonars | See Below Water in Real-Time. The live scope gave us an advantage on targeting fish suspended in brush piles. Below is a picture showing the Live scope and our Grub putting in the work to catch over 20 crappies. We will discuss all of the options we used to catch crappie today.
Bill and I also experimented with modifying some of our lures like the Ball Point – J Bro’s Lures (jbroslures.com) and Double Trouble – J Bro’s Lures (jbroslures.com) Ned Rigs. Below I will show you how we modified the baits.
Starting with the Ball Point Ned. This Ned is 3″ long and 3/8″ diameter at the head. You will want to cut the bait around 1 1/4″ to 1 1/2″ long from the ball point end. See Below: With this change it will give the bait a smaller profile and a bit less movement. This all depends on the day and what the fish want to eat. I was able to catch a few with the rig.
Now on to the Double Trouble Ned which is 3″ long and has more of a rounded diamond shape. The Double Trouble was by far the right bait for the day after we made a slight modification. We cut the bait three (3) to four (4) ribs up from the tail and inserted a small jig head (1/8oz). See Below: Bill was able to catch all of his fish on the Double Trouble and the modification he made.
Now let’s move to our 3″ grub. Grub – J Bro’s Lures (jbroslures.com) The 3″ grub can be modified by removing the two outside curly tails and cutting the bait three (3) to four (4) ribs up from the tail. This looks a lot like the double trouble, but it has way more action given that the tails are longer. See Below:
Last but not Least is our 2″ grub. Grub – J Bro’s Lures (jbroslures.com) This grub needs NO modifications and works really well be vertically jigged or casted and reeled back. Using your favorite jig head from sizes 1/32oz, 1/16oz and 1/8oz these grubs will catch panfish and bass.
All in all, Bill and I had a successful day at West Branch catching these crappies on our modified baits. Thank you for stopping by and check out our catches below:
