While most American crappie fishing right now is dominated by forward-facing sonar and dock-shooting techniques, Richard Gene - the YouTuber who fishes as 'The Fishing Machine' - went the other way this week and pulled a 16-inch white crappie out of a 15-foot deep flat on the Tennessee River using a bottom-bumping pattern he hadn't run in years.
The trip opened on a small offshore hump tucked between creek channels. Two boom-boom bites delivered a 10-inch keeper and the day's headline fish. Richard Gene tossed a marker buoy on the spot, dropped into a sideways drift, and ended up with a feed of fish out of what he described as no man's land.
"That fish was actually in 15 ft of water. I'd been concentrating in 19 to - I mean, from 17 to about 21 feet of water without a bite. And so these fish may have come up a little bit shallower," he said.
His case for bottom-bumping over more popular live-scope and dock-shooting techniques is direct. "This is the way to catch the giants. They're out here in open water roaming around on absolutely nothing. You might say just deep flats," he said. "White crappie don't really have to have much cover at all."
The rig is intentionally simple. A barrel swivel sits at the top of an 8 lb braid main line, with one or two drop-loops formed using his own version of a uni knot to hold a 5-8 inch leader at right angles to the main line. Hooks are size-six Gamakatsu Stilettos baited with tuffy minnows, which Richard Gene says outlast and out-fish standard shiners. At the bottom of the rig is a tin or lead drop-shot weight, crimped on so it can pull free if it snags a stump.
"This is going to be clipping the bottom making noise, which is what attracts these fish in my opinion," he said. "That tick tick tick on the bottom causes you to catch these big fish. I know it does because I know for a fact that catfish are attracted by that sound. Bass are attracted by that sound. Crappie are the same way."
Boat control is the silent half of the technique. Richard Gene runs his kicker motor turned sideways into the wind to hold the boat broadside, fanning two or three rods over a wide arc as the rig drifts across the flat. A drift sock is the recommended substitute for anyone who hasn't dialled in the kicker trick yet.
"These deep water fish, when the wind's blowing this hard and you're fishing this deep, they're a battle," he said. "The biggest crappie you'll ever catch normally will be the rogue fish."
The technique also extends past the spawn calendar. Richard Gene says the same rig will work in summer when most crappie anglers have packed up and switched to bass. The deep flats hold roaming fish that don't need cover, and the noise of the weight calling them in does most of the searching.
For anyone running into the post-spawn lull on Southern impoundments, the drift-and-tick technique is a legitimate counterweight to the live-scope obsession that has taken over much of the modern crappie scene. The fish are still there, sitting on featureless flats, and the right rig with the right minnow will find them.