For many, crappies provide the first excitement of the season, as anglers eagerly await the forage-driven movements that draw slabs out of deep water and into the cover-laden shallows where they are easy to access.

By summer, though, crappie interest lags. Fish vacate the shallows; the easy pickings are over as fish often relocate to the open water of main lake basins.

Come fall, crappies often move back toward cover such as deep-wood cover. It’s a process that often finds fish suspended in the water column in areas close, but not necessary in, the cover.

Trolling is a great tactic at this time. Trolling not only puts crappies in the boat, it’s also a great search tactic. You cover water quickly, keeping baits in the water. And once you make contact, you have the option of doubling back on the productive area to find out if there’s something present holding fish.

If there is, you can then switch over to a vertical tactic like a blade bait or yo-yoing a jig or bait rig.

Small crankbaits make the best presentation for crappie trolling, at least when it comes to searching. They can be trolled at 1½ to 2 mph. Crankbaits are too big for crappies, you say! Take a good look at the funnel-shaped mouth of a good-sized crappie the next time you catch one. Smaller crankbaits like a two-inch Hot-n-Tot, a number 5 Shad Rap (also, two inches long) and 2.5-inch Cordell Wally Diver are similar in size and profile to much of the bait crappies are bulking up on at this time of year; not oversized for the maw of a decent-sized slab.

Since crappies are in deeper zones at this time of year, you’ll need to make some adjustments to get one of the previously mentioned crankbaits down to the sweet zone. This could be close to the bottom or suspended in the water column, with fish often showing up on the sonar screen.

The two basic tools I use to short-line troll near the bottom are: a moderately light action trolling rod/reel (with linecounter) loaded with 30-pound test superbraid line, which has the same diameter as eight-pound mono; and a half-ounce keel sinker (aka trolling sinker).

I tie a snap to the end of the superbraid line on my trolling setups. When I want to add a trolling weight, such as in this instance, it’s a simple matter of clipping it on the snap.

The trolling weights I use feature a snap off their tail end. To this a clip a three- to four-foot fluorocarbon leader (the leader is tied with a barrel swivel on one end, a snap on the other). Then the lure is added to the leader snap.

With this setup you can run small crankbaits down in the 18-to-25-foot zone with around 50 to 75 feet of line, when trolling around 1.8 mph. When you add a weight like a trolling sinker, the lure will run deeper the slower you go; conversely, it will run shallower when you speed up.

After you have your rods set up and have established a starting trolling speed, simply pay out line, engaging the reel occasionally so the line “stretches out” and lure achieves its depth for that let-out.

Repeat the process until you begin bumping bottom. Then you can reel in a bit of line to get the lure up off the bottom. The lure will run at that approximate depth if you maintain the same basic speed.

If the bottom’s snaggy (stumps, cribs, etc), or you’re spotting suspended fish up off the bottom, bringing in more line will get your baits higher.

This same setup can be used for targeting various depth zones over open water. Experiment with various lengths of “let out” line until you have success. Linecounter reels allow you to replicate this length.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle