Knapp: Having the right touch, and rigging, with slip bobbers
Unlike the previous brushpiles I had fished, ones found in 15-20 feet of water, this one was in a depth of 11 feet, with branches extended nearly to the surface.
I picked up a rod rigged with a slip bobber, added a Berkley Crappie Nibble to the 1/16-ounce jig/plastic bait combination, and pitched the rig toward the edge of the brushpile. I watched as the line slid through the stem of the bobber, its descent halted when the bobber stop/bead jammed against the float.
The bobber had barely settled when it slowly slipped under the surface. A sweep of the 7 1/2-foot light power rod pinned the fish to the jighead. After a spirited tussle, a 14-inch black crappie was in the boat.
This event took place a couple of weeks ago on Lake Arthur. The purpose of the trip was to check out a collection of cover and structure options that can be productive for crappies during the late-summer to mid-fall period. This milk run, developed from dozens of exploratory trips, features numerous cribs, brushpiles, submerged bridge decks and bridge abutments. They exist in a variety of depths.
Being a transient fish by nature, part of the challenge of catching crappies is first finding them, something that always seems to be in flux. Here today, gone tomorrow.
On this outing, structure and cover options in deeper water only produced a few small crappies and bluegills. It wasn’t until I fished the shallower water that I began to catch quality-sized crappies. It’s a perfect situation for using a slip bobber setup.
Slip bobbers allow you to present a bait at a specific depth, suspending it for however long you wish.
The opening scenario described a “brushy” brushpile with numerous branches reaching up toward the surface. Complex cover like this is often more attractive to crappies than a relatively featureless submerged tree trunk sporting a couple nude branches.
The problem is that it’s snaggy, too. A light jig cast and retrieved slowly over the top of the cover can catch fish, and is my preferred approach. But many times crappies won’t chase, responding better to a more stationary presentation, as in a bait suspended below a float.
A fixed float is fine for hanging a bait down 2-3 feet. After that, it becomes cumbersome to cast. A slip bobber is ideal for working depths of 3-10 feet. Beyond 10 feet, in my experience, it’s better to hold the boat over the spot and yo-yo the presentation vertically without a float of any kind.
For those unfamiliar, a slip bobber rig consists of a float with a hollow stem, a bobber stop, a plastic bead and a jig (or split shot) with enough weight to pull the line through the bobber stem.
The rigging goes like this: the bobber stop (either thread or rubber) is first, then thread on the plastic bead, followed by the bobber, then the jig. Slide the bobber stop up the line to the depth you wish to fish. For example, in my opening example I wanted to fish the edges of the cover in around 5 feet and set the stop accordingly.
It takes a bit of tweaking to get a bobber stop rig to function best. For example, enough weight to pull the line through the stem, but not so much as to sink the float. I use a split shot to accomplish this, one placed a few inches above the jig. This keeps the bobber from sliding the whole way down to the jig when being cast, as well.
Also, it’s common for the bobber stop to move when winding in a fish (as it catches on the rod tip top), so be prepared to readjust it. Finally, a great deal of line slack can occur when fishing a slip bobber rig. Long rods do a good job of picking up this slack during a hookset and minimize missed bites.
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle
