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.

After the original Mister Twister came onto the market, I did not tie a bucktail jig for a couple of years. Then I ran out of bucktail jigs and realized that they had not been replaced by soft plastic ...