Photo by Ron Sinfelt

No matter what you call it -- dabbing, dabbling or doodlesocking -- many professional crappie anglers agree on one thing: It's the most efficient way to catch springtime crappies from flooded brush and shoreline spawning beds.

The technique's simple. Use a 10- to 14-foot-long pole with a length of light line to drop a bait right down into the brushy, weedy structure that crappies love in the spring. It's precise, it's quiet, and it's absolutely killer for crappies -- if you know when, where and how to do it. Three professional crappie anglers offered a few tips on how they make doodlesocking work for them

Phil Rambo, who follows several of the major crappie tournament schedules, takes doodlesocking poles to every tournament he enters. He has 10-, 11- and 12-foot-long rods; of these three lengths he prefers the first rigged with a simple spincasting reel spooled with 8- or 10-pound-test line.

"Doodlesocking is my favorite way to fish for crappies in the spring when a lake is higher than normal," said Rambo. "It works from a boat, and it works from the shore. Trying to cast and retrieve jigs or minnows into flooded weeds and brush along a shallow shoreline, you're just going to snag up. With a long pole, you just lower your bait right down into all the brush and lift it back out."

Rambo prefers a 1/16-ounce minnow-head tube jig but may use a 1/32-ounce jighead if the crappies are biting sluggishly. If, however, they're aggressive, he'll tie on a 1/8-ounce jig. "The 1/16-ounce jig lets me feel what I'm doing, so I can literally walk it down a branch or along a log," he said. "The 1/32-ounce jigs fall more slowly, so they're good when the fish are finicky and need more time to look at it on the way down. But if they're really on a bite, I'll switch to a 1/8-ounce jig just so I can get it down to them faster."

During the peak of the spawn Rambo uses tube jigs alone. When fish are more selective, he adds Berkley Crappie Nibbles to his tube jigs. When crappies become indifferent, he tips his jigs with lip-hooked minnows.

"It's all about time," he explained. "If they're biting fast, a plain old tube jig will get you back to fishing faster. Crappie Nibbles are good when they're a little more picky, because you can usually get a couple crappies off each Nibble before it comes off. Minnows are always good, but they rarely last more than one bite, so I only use them if fish are biting slow."

Rambo's final tip for amateur doodlesockers: "My dad used to fish from shore with a long bamboo pole, and before he'd even bait up, he'd walk along the shoreline and use the tip of that bamboo pole to lightly smack the surface of the water where he intended to fish. He said that crappies were inquisitive fish, and that lightly smacking the water drew their attention. All I know is he used to catch lots of fish when he did it."

In recent years Jim Coleman has doodlesocked his way to several crappie tournament wins in both shallow and deep water. Flooded lakes with lots of floating debris rimming the shoreline make him smile.

"I love to go back into a bay or cove during the spawn and see a solid mat of floating twigs and stems and leaves," he said. "Crappies feel really comfortable under that stuff. I've caught crappies from as little as a foot of water under that floating mat."

The challenge lies in getting a bait down through the floating mulch to where the crappies are lurking. "If the water is really shallow under the mat I'll wind the jig up tight to the end of the rod, poke the rod tip down through the junk, then release the jig and fish with the rod tip under the mat," Coleman observed. "Other times, if there's a little more depth under the mat and I'm not as concerned about spooking them, I'll wind the jig up tight against the end of the rod, then use the tip of the rod to gently clear a small hole so I can drop the jig down through it."