The 1/8-ounce Micro ShadZ jig head with the 2-inch StingerZ soft plastic body hadn’t been in the water for two minutes behind my buddy Ron’s slowly moving pontoon boat when I felt the first “tap.”
“So, Ron, we got a dollar on the first fish?” I asked casually.
Ron jerked his head around to look at my rod tip, which at that moment was not showing any signs of a fish.
“Oh sure,” he replied.
As the word “sure” left his mouth, the fish came back and inhaled the small, pearl-colored offering.
Ron Barger, aka The Panfish Assassin, displays a suspended gill that ate a Bo’s Bluegill Buster spinner rig baited with a crawler.
“Well, there he is!” I exclaimed, feeling the giddy thrill of once again winning a bet with one of my longest friends, who after getting duped a few times over the years, always checks my rod tip when I suggest we bet on the first fish. The crappie with such excellent timing on that sunny July morning was about 10 inches long. Another speck and seven big bluegills would join it in the fish basket.
We caught all of them while trolling small lures and bait right down the middle of one of Michigan’s typical cereal bowl lakes.
Trolling for panfish on hot summer days might be the deadliest method going, and it seems like not many anglers are cashing in on this simple tactic.
I first started trolling for panfish as part of an expedition my buddy Al spearheaded more than a decade ago. Al had studied a map and found a lake in the middle of a summer camp. The lake was surrounded by private property and had no boat ramp, but was accessible through a small creek that ran under a county road about a mile away.
The only way to get to the lake was by paddling against the current in a small jon boat, canoe or kayak. You had to get out and drag your watercraft over a beaver dam and through very shallow water a couple of times to finally get there. But it always was worth the effort, as this lake was full of suspended big bluegills and bonus crappies that didn’t see a lot of anglers. And after a long day of harvesting a limit of big panfish, it was all downstream to get back to the trucks.
Al’s favorite setup was a small No. 14 or No. 12 Worden’s Spin-N-Glo rigged on a 4-pound test leader. A couple of tiny round beads between the floating winged spinner and the No. 8 Aberdeen style Tru Turn Hook helped keep the Spin-N-Glo spinning. The long shank helped unhook fish.
Sometimes Al put two Spin-N-Glos in tandem to bulk up the presentation, but one usually worked just fine. Best bait was almost always a couple of waxworms, which were easy to keep lively in a small cooler on a hot summer day. My buddy Ron, who is a panfish trolling assassin, uses two-hook spinner rigs and, usually, leafworms or nightcrawlers. He is a fan of Bo’s Bluegill Buster, a pre-tied, two-hook rig that comes with two interchangeable spinner blades. It’s available at bait shops around southern Michigan, and you can order them online at vandamwarehouse.com.
Other good lures include the 2 1/2-inch Slim SwimmerZ on whatever size jig head will take it to the depth you want it to go. You won’t need more than an 1/8-ounce jighead in most cases, and often, a smaller one will be better to keep it farther back behind the boat and near the surface. The SwimmerZ is a boot-tail swimbait, and any of the small twister-tail type grubs on a jig can catch fish.
Not all lakes are conducive to trolling for panfish. Some are just too weedy. Chunks of floating weeds are the real problem, as most of the trolling will take place over deep water where live weeds don’t come up to the surface. Loose weeds and clumps of algae in some lakes can make trolling a pain.
The best lakes I know of for trolling have large, deep basins.
What are the bluegills and crappies doing out suspended over the deepest parts of these lakes?
We can make an educated guess that they find food out there, either rising from the lake bottom or falling in from above. Crappies are likely after minnows that feed on small bugs out in the middle of a lake. Generally speaking, we find most of the fish in the top 10 feet, sometimes right at the surface. Rarely do we add much weight to get the baits deeper than 6 to 8 feet. Running the baits too deep is probably worse than keeping them too shallow. It seems like these fish over the basins are always looking up.
That said, some days you want your lure as close to the thermocline as possible. Just like in the Great Lakes, the break between warm and cold water in small lakes can concentrate the whole food chain at a specific depth. Almost any sonar unit will show the hazy line where plankton concentrates just above the colder water.
Spinners, Spin-N-Glos and teensy swimbaits like the StingerZ from Z-Man Fishing Products are all effective, but the best action usually comes on the rigs sweetened with live bait. I’ve tried some products such as the Berkley PowerBait grubs that look like waxworms, but the real live larvae have always out-fished the name brand stuff.
Speed control is important, and Ron tries to keep his pontoon boat’s 15-hp four-stroke motor just barely pushing it. Sometimes, as on the day we fished in July, the wind is blowing at the right speed and direction so that Ron could turn off the motor and just let the breeze push us down the lake. He’d then fire up the Mercury outboard to troll back against the wind.
In my 17-foot MirroCraft, I used a Minn Kota bowmount trolling motor with the autopilot feature. It served well when trolling downwind—we could turn off the big outboard and let the trolling motor do all the propulsion and steering. Going back against the wind, we’d leave the trolling motor in the water, fire up the outboard and steer with the trolling motor.
Kayaks work great, too. I have gathered more than one panfish dinner by trolling from one. Although you can troll while paddling a kayak, it’s easier, in my opinion, to troll from a foot-powered kayak or one with an electric trolling motor. Paddling is great exercise, but you need the rods in front of you to monitor them for bites. They can get in the way of your paddle.
Here’s a kayak trolling tip that might save you a lot of time and frustration. Although Michigan allows three rods for trolling, start with just two. You’ll catch plenty of fish, and a third rod, in my experience, causes time-wasting tangles and unnecessary frustration. Also, get decent rod holders that you can slide into your kayak track system in front of you. If you troll with your rods behind you, you can’t react as quickly to bites.
While it’s always fun to watch a bobber go down or feel a direct bite while tight-lining over the side of a boat, trolling can provide better panfish catches than still-fishing in the summer heat. Just don’t keep all the big ones, which can really hurt some of these fisheries, especially in smaller lakes. Leave some big bluegill genes in the pool and you’ll be trolling up panfish dinners for years to come.
