CONWAY - Are jigs better than minnows for catching crappie? Some Arkansas anglers say so. And others don’t agree.

Jigs and minnows also work well, at times, when combined – a jig tipped with a minnow.

But what type and color of jig is the most productive? We’ve got hair jigs, chicken feather jigs, plastic jigs, tube jigs, and mylar jigs. And that’s just for starters.

Today, there are more jig types and color combinations than you can shake a stick at. Blue and green skirts on crappie jigs have worked – at times – on LakeConway for some years. Pink is popular – sometimes. Curly-tailed jigs are favored sometimes over straight tail models.

If we ever get past the issue of jig colors, then we get into jig sizes – their weights. Quarter-ounce jigs sometimes are too big for crappie, so anglers go to one-eighth-ounce jigs. Then somebody switches to 1/16-ounce and catches a boatload. Next time around, it’s 1/32-ounce that’s working.

Rarely, somebody might use a 1/64-ounce jig on crappie, but these are more commonly worked for trout.

Some crappie specialists in our area make use of model airplane paints from a hobby store to color the heads of bare lead jigs.

In LakeConway’s early days, a frequently heard bit of advice for crappie anglers was “use any color jig as long as it’s white or chartreuse.” Then yellow came into popular use, or maybe yellow was in the mix all along, just not as prominent as white and chartreuse.

Somewhere along the line, they started painted the heads of jigs various colors instead of the familiar lead or silver tones. One time, a red-head jig with a chartreuse skirt brought in the crappie. Next time, it might be a black-head jig with a white skirt. White-head jigs with chartreuse skirts could catch crappie some days, but a chartreuse-head jig with white skirt would work the next time out.

Do the crappie really know the difference in all this? Crappie fishermen think they do.