One of the most important things to remember when choosing a lure is that what worked yesterday may not work today. Next up remember that what worked in one location most likely will not work in another. There are reasons that crappie move around one of which is that they want some variety in their diet. If you find that they like a silver minnow in one spot they may not like it in another. This can be disheartening at times especially when you are fishing outside of spawning season.
Don't forget you have a bigger brain, although it may not seem like it sometimes, it is your job to know what the crappie is looking for. So start by knowing what bait fish are in the area. Do not make the same mistake that so many do and assume that the crappie is looking for minnows. There are lots of other foods out there. Throughout the year crappie will eat everything including worms, minnows, crawdads, snakes, frogs, tadpoles and every type of bug it can catch. I've even known them to chase after a bare hook and a finger dangling in the water.
There so many varieties and categories for lures that it's hard to find a spot to start. So let us begin by defining three categories of lures: plastics, cloth or feather and live. Of course there are mixes of those but let's start at the basics.
With every type of lure we have to consider how it behaves in the water not just how flashy it looks in your tackle box. This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make so do not choose a lure based on how it looks in your box, that is just too metro-sexual and this is a man's sport so get over it.
Starting with plastics the main goal here is to resemble the shape, color and size of a potential target food. Of course trying to capture the behavior of live bait is also included but that relies on you knowing what to do when it comes to presentation. Plastics can look so very much like the object of the crappies affection that it can be scary but the real question is how does it behave and look in the water. Often times these lures are stiff in the water and do not present well. They do have their advantages because they look so much like live food so when using these be sure to use lighting to your advantage. These absorb scents or can be called 'scentless'. I have never had success with using scents on any type of lure.
Next up cloth or feather type lures, I'm ignoring the plastic lures that try to behave like cloth. These have an advantage over plastics because of the presentation. These lures do not look much like real crappie food but when they are wet they do look a lot better. When the cloth or feather lure is wet it adheres more to the fluid dynamics and when pulled correctly buy a line and a quick wrist it will swim just like a bait fish does when swimming. These are hard to visualize because they change shape so much when they are in the water.
