Slab crappies are meat eaters—sure enough minnow munchers. They take artificials well at times, especially jigs—but big crappie will turn their noses at even the best of the best crappie lures.

Almost every veteran crappie catcher can recount times when he was catching fish just as fast as he could toss out a yellow jig, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, the fishing went bust. Different ...