What's your go-to bait for panfish?

[Santaaa]

My favorite bait is the good old fashioned nightcrawler. Strangest bait I caught a blue gill on was a leaf. A dried up brown leaf on a hook. I was bored so I wanted to see how stupid the blue gill really were so I tied a small hook to fishing line and put a leaf on the hook and jiggled the line. and sure enough a school of bluegill came charging like mad and I hooked one. I let it go but thought wow this fish is stupid. They taste good but they sure are no real challenge to catch. Crappie are a good bit harder. I have only caught a few of them 2 or three but then I don't regulary target them either. I target channel catfish. the one night I caught a crappie was the night before father's day I was night fishing and so were a bunch of other guys. Everyone was Striper fishing. I was just fishing just to be fishing. I got the only fish of the whole night. It was a crappie. It dragged my bobber up and down the lakeshore. It held on enough to drag the bobber but not enough to take it under. It took hours to catch him. dragged it for 2 or 3 hours. He was the only one of the night so it was worth it. there were probably 20-30 guys there and I showed them all up. It was a blast. I was fishing with such a close together group as I could not afford a lattern. I have a cheap kerosean one now. It was fun though. I picked up all sorts of good fishing advice from the older anglers. I ran into a guy that was part of the striper fishing club. He sure had alot of good advice for me. What do you do when they aren't biting? You fish for advice casually. Best to get them talking about stories and you get a pretty good idea of what the fishing report is. Sets you up for some nice fishing. Gives you alot of new things to try.
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