OK, so you’re thinking about going Croppie fishing and it occurred to you that if you up your chances you could have a lot more fun. So you started thinking “how can I help my chances?” Well, an old fisherman once told me that the best way to up your chances when you are fishing any species of fish is to chum the water around where you are fishing.
Of course you need to make sure that is legal on the lake or river where you are going to be dunking a worm.
Let’s get a little more specific and ask the question; what are some of the best ideas for chum for Crappie fishing?
So, I’m going to name a few but then I am going to tell you what are some of the top performers out of the list.
My goal here is to write an article that might have one or two things in it you have not heard of before. However, I also want to leave you with some good ideas of what you can use and have good luck with.
So without further delay, let’s go check out some of the things that I have been told work for other anglers and what has worked for me in the past.
OK, let’s say you are sitting on a boat in the middle of the lake in the fall time and you just want to hang a jig and up your chances of catching fish in that spot. All the best thing to do is to attract the main food source of the crappy. That would be minnows or shad.
Photo By @chiefcrappieraider
- Use Cornmeal
- muse crushed egg shells
- use a sponge soaked in fish oil
- use garlic and gelatin
- use chopped fish
Use Cornmeal
One person came up with the idea of using cornmeal spread all around the boat and then hanging a jig down below. Seems like it could make sense because corn powder is finely ground and it will take a long time for it to sink to the bottom. If you sprinkle a little corn powder around your boat every 15 or 20 minutes, there will always be corn powder slowly fluttering toward the bottom lake. This will attract the small fish that want to come and eat the corn meal and in turn this will attract the larger crappie that you seek.
You see it’s not a question of throwing something out there that the crappie are after it’s a question of attracting the bait fish that the crappy seek.
Crushed Egg Shells
Let’s Move on and give you another idea. I heard one angler talk about breaking up your egg shells from breakfast in the morning and taking those with you to the lake. You break them up very fine drop them in the water around you they flutter to the bottom and they attract the bait fish. At this point I probably do not have to say what happens after that but I will anyway, the bait fish are attracted to the egg shells and the Crappie then come because they are attracted to the bait fish.
One angler that I came across on YouTube has the video channel that bears his name Matt Mattson. He has a video called how to make a fish attractor.
Soak A Sponge in Fishoil
In his video he explains using a peanut butter jar or something similar with a sponge inside, he punches a hole on top of the lid and in the jar he pours fish oil.
So the sponge holds the oil and he ties a fishing line around the jar and lowers it to the bottom of the lake around his dock. He says in this way he is able to keep fish hanging around his dock because there is always a scent of fish oil there.
Special Garlic Mix
Another idea is to mix your own gelatin/garlic mixture to spread on your fingers and your lure in order to mask your scent or the scent of the rubber lure and give the fish something more appetizing smelling.
Minced Fish
Now here is one of my preferred methods. You get out some old fish out of your freezer or go down to the store and buy you some mackerel or some kind of stinky fish and then you take that with you and try to ditch all the cats on the way home.
Once you get home, make sure your wife’s not looking and you grab her food processor and quickly add all those fish to it. Turn it on the highest setting until it looks like peanut butter. Then you take that and put it in a mesh bag. The kind of mesh bag I’m talking about is the kind that you can get at the dollar store for your laundry.
Once you get it in there you take and put it in a used plastic grocery bag and mark on it liver and onions. That way the kids won’t get it out and try to cook it. As if the kids would cook anything…
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However with my luck they will grab the one thing they’re not supposed to. Anyway when you’re ready to go fishing you take that bag out of the freezer and assuming you’re not too badly mangled from your wife beating you for using her blender, you tie that to a rope and throw a few rocks in with it and drop it to the bottom. Once that peanut buttery mackerel/nasty fish starts to thaw out, you will be attracting all kinds of baitfish around you. Either that or you’ll totally pollute the water to where you don’t want to go swimming once it gets hot.
Other Ideas
Anyway this seems to work pretty good. I’ve seen people throw all kinds of stuff in there like dog food, bread, even hot dogs. Use your imagination. If you don’t use all of the fish peanut butter you can always take it out of the water throw it back in the bag and stick it back in the freezer and use it for next time. It might save you a beating.
Or it might get you another beating for putting that in the freezer. Anyway, you should catch a lot of fish if you use this method but you might want to wear a lot of padding when you get home.
You know come to think of it what you might want to do is get your wife a new food processor so you can have the old one. This idea may save you a little skin and help to keep your relationship strong.
No matter which way you choose to do it, chumming is always good if it’s legal in your area. It definitely brings in the fish and now it’s just up to you to catch them.
So go out there and chum them up and stack you up some slabs. Have a good time while you’re at it and make lots of memories. Hopefully your wounds heal up quickly and you can have a good time fishing. Bye for now.
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