KENT DRISCOLL - EXTRAORDINARY CRAPPIE FISHERMAN
Jig Fishing
 EDITOR'S
NOTE: Kent Driscoll of Cordova, Tennessee, has enjoyed
fishing for crappie for 30 years. He's fished in crappie
tournaments and finishing third in 2000 and fourth in
2002 at the North American Crappie Classic. Each spring
and summer, Driscoll fishes the Crappie USA Circuit,
Crappiemasters and the new Crappie Angler's Association,
using a wide variety of tactics that produce crappie
all year long. For the next two weeks, we'll learn how
Driscoll finds and catches crappie.
Question: When you're jig fishing, what size jig and
what
pound Mossy Oak Fishing Line are you using, and how
are you
presenting the jig to the crappie?
Driscoll: I like to use 10-pound-test line because
when I'm wade fishing, I'm usually going to catch bigger
crappie than when I'm open-water fishing, and those
crappie will be in thick cover. I'll need the line to
help muscle the crappie out of the cover. Most of the
time, I'll use Mossy Oak's high-vis line to help me
see the bite. I prefer a 3/32-ounce teaser jig with
a tube body on the jig head. During the early spring,
I prefer either red or an orange head on my jig or possibly
chartreuse. The body of my jig will be chartreuse, about
90 percent of the time. My all-time  favorite
color is a chartreuse/red sparkle body or a chartreuse/orange
body with sparkle in it or a chartreuse/black with sparkle.
I do use pink-and-white and white-and-yellow colored
jigs from time to time. Ninety percent of the time,
I'll tip my jig with a large-sized minnow.
I believe that the bigger the bait is that you're using,
the bigger the crappie will be that you catch. A live
bait gives off smell and vibrations, which help a crappie
in stained water to find the bait. I believe that a
crappie feels threatened when a live bait invades its
spawning area, and this reason is why crappie will strike
that big minnow on the back of my jig.
Question: How do you fish that jig and minnow in and
around that brush?
Driscoll: Most of the time, I'll use a 10-foot Sam
Heaton B'n'M super-sensitive crappie pole and fish 10-pound-test
high-vis Mossy Oak Fishing Line. As I approach the brush,
I'll have the pole in my right hand and about a foot
and a half of Mossy Oak Fishing Line coming from the
pole in my left hand, much like a fly fisherman holds
his line out away from his fly rod. When I reach the
brush I want to fish, I pull the jig and minnow up to
the very tip of the pole with my line. Then I slip the
tip of the rod into the brush so that I can drop the
minnow and jig in the hole in the brush that I want
to fish. By wading, I can get my rod tip up under the
brush in places that a boat fisherman never can fish.
Once I get my jig and minnow above the hole I want to
fish, I begin to ease the bait down into the water so
that it doesn't make a splash.
 Question:
Okay, Kent, once you've got the minnow and the jig in
the hole in the bush that you want to fish, what do
you do next?
Driscoll: I very slowly begin to feed out line so that
the minnow and jig begin to sneak into the hole very
slowly. Most of the time the strike will come within
the first 6 to 8 inches after the minnow and the jig
begin to drop into the hole. I've also learned that
usually the bigger crappie are going to be back up in
the brush as far as they can get.
Question: Once the crappie takes the bait in that deep
brush, how do you get the fish out of the deep brush?
Driscoll: When I feel the bite, I snap my wrist up
to set the hook. Now I'm not making a hard hook set
- just a quick, firm hook set. Once I've got the crappie
on the jig, I pull the line with my left hand and try
and get the crappie up to within 3 inches of the tip
of the pole. Then I start backing the rod with the crappie
on it out of the brush.
 Once
I get the crappie clear of the brush, I use a dip net
with an elastic bungee cord on it like trout fishermen
use. As soon as the crappie comes out of the brush,
I want to put that net under the crappie and get the
fish in the net before it has a chance to break free.
One of the problems with wade fishing for crappie is
even though you'll catch a lot of fish, you'll also
often lose a lot of fish. The crappie are hard to control
when you start to pull them out of the brush, and you
may only have a foot of line from the pole to the crappie.
Because I'm putting that jig in as rough an environment
as there is on any lake, and I'm pulling that crappie
often that will weigh 2 pounds or more out of that bush,
I've got to have a line I can depend on, like the Mossy
Oak high-vis line.
To learn more about Mossy Oak Fishing Line, go to www.mossyoakfishing.com.
For more information on B'n'M crappie poles, visit www.bnmpoles.com.
TOMORROW: CRANKING UP FOR CRAPPIE
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