The Big Guns: How One Family's Crappie Obsession Evolved Into the South's Most Deadly Trolling System

Les Smith has been carrying on the family tradition of power trolling for decades. But recently, he expanded on the concept and made it even deadlier.

A crappie goes airborne as Les Smith hoists a 20-foot rod clear of its holder — no reeling required. The second lure on the rig swings free in the air above it. | Photo by Kurt Mazurek

I’ve been around all kinds of fishing, all over the country, but I had never seen a fishing system quite like this. What looked from a distance like a giant floating porcupine, turned out to be Les Smith’s big center console Skeeter. It was loaded with rods, some up to 20 feet long, pointing out in every direction. I quickly learned that what appeared to be chaos was in fact a highly refined system that’s been hammering big Mississippi crappies for decades.

An array of rod holders on the bow hold eight, extra-long rods, affectionately referred to as the “big guns,” fanned out around the nose of the boat like the whiskers of a catfish, rod tips hovering inches above the water. Each line is rigged with two proven crappie-catching lures and lowered to a precise depth. A pair of anglers sit side by side in custom-fitted chairs, watching those tips for twitches often imperceptible to the rest of us.

With power trolling there’s no casting and no reeling. They zip around on the trolling motor looking for schools of fish. When a rod loads up, the angler lifts the giant pole clear of its holder, arches it toward the sky, and swings a crappie through the air like he's flying a kite. Even for these guys that have been doing it their whole lives, it’s not graceful. It is however, unmistakably effective.

This is power trolling for crappie, and Les Smith of northern Mississippi is the keeper of the technique. His parents A.E. and Flo Smith were the originators.

Watch Les Smith break down the full system, from how his dad invented it to why Church Tackle planer boards changed everything.

How the Big Guns Work

The full bow spread with giant eight rods fanned around the nose of the boat covering a 46-foot side-to-side swath. Two anglers sit within reach of all eight rod holders. Rods pulling planer boards are visible at the back of the boat. | Kurt Mazurek

Smith inherited the obsession and has refined the process over the years. Today the cane poles his parents used have been replaced by technique-specific B’n’M Pow-R-Troller graphite rods. While his parents typically ran five lures on every rod, modern regulations have trimmed that back to just two. Controlling precise presentation depth with line counter reels, each rig starts with a two-to-three ounce weight, then the first lure two feet down, second lure three feet below that. Those eight rods fan out to cover a 46-foot side-to-side swath in front of and around the boat. Like most trolling techniques, it works because it maximizes the time the baits spend in the most productive part of the water column.

When 20 Feet Isn't Enough

An overhead view of a power trolling boat with the full spread in action. The rods up front (big guns) reach up to 20-feet on each side. While Church Tackle TX-12 Mini planer boards pulled off the stern position lures up to 150 feet off the side of the boat, well beyond what any rod can reach. | Kurt Mazurek

But the big guns have one limitation—20 feet is 20 feet. Since there is no casting, the lures can only get as far away from the boat as the length of the rod allows. And while most days they still find their share of active biters, Smith mentioned that the rising popularity of forward-facing sonar seems to be making the crappies increasingly boat-shy, often spooking wide of his rigs, beyond the reach of the big guns. Smith could see them on his graph. Some days he just couldn't keep a bait in front of them.

The solution came from an unlikely source and an unlikely manufacturer. A Michigan walleye troller named Jim Churchill, often left the Northwoods to chase big crappie down south with Smith. Churchill suggested running Michigan manufacturer Church Tackle's TX-12 Mini planer boards off the rear of the boat to reach the fish they’d been missing. Smith said it became crystal clear to him when Churchill described it like, “Think of the planer board as the rod tip, except instead of 20 feet, it can reach up to 150 feet.” Run the same rig, same weight, same leader length, same two lures, same line counter depth setting, but clip it to a planer board. As the name suggests, the planer board planes out to the side, riding the surface and pulling the rig out to the side as the boat moves forward.

Church Tackle TX-12 Mini planer boards trail behind Les Smith's FinSpin crappie boat, flags up and tracking. The boards carry the same two-lure rig used on the bow rods, but much farther from the boat. | Kurt Mazurek

Now, in addition to the eight big guns on the bow, Smith runs eight planer boards off the stern, four on each side. On a good day, that's 16 lines in the water (with the required four anglers in the boat), covering a gigantic lane as much as 150 feet off each side of the boat. Smith says the boards catch as many fish as the big guns some days—some days even more.

The stern crew works to land a double hookup off the planer board spread. The Church Tackle TX-12 is designed to handle rigs up to three ounces, but sensitive enough to detect light-biting panfish. | Kurt Mazurek

Church Tackle's TX-12 Mini is, as far as Smith knows, the only planer board on the market that’s the perfect size and specs to work at this scale for crappie. These boards are small and sensitive enough to detect a light-biting panfish, but more than capable of tracking perfectly while pulling up to a three-ounce weight. That combination makes all the difference. Lots of boards are too large which kills the sensitivity and challenges lighter tackle. But a board that’s too small can't handle the fairly heavy rig weight and multiple lures at trolling speed. The TX-12 fits perfectly into this system, which is why Smith calls it the power trolling board of choice for southern crappie anglers.

Not for Every Angler, but Deadly for Crappie

While there is no doubt about the effectiveness of this "power trolling + planer board trolling system," it is a very specialized system and demands serious commitment to specific equipment and hard-won practice. Swinging a 20-foot rod one-handed while grabbing a flying crappie and avoiding the loose hooks of the second bait, while keeping watch over a fleet of planer boards running a good distance from the back of the boat, is the kind of thing you can't fake. But somewhere on a Mississippi lake right now, a boat that looks like a pin cushion is tracking across the water—big guns kissing the surface, red planer board flags pulling wide behind it—carrying on something A.E. Smith started decades ago and making a lot of crappies nervous.