Clyde Folse is a very particular guy when it comes to tackle, which is probably natural for a tackle maker.
He always fishes his jigs under a cork.
“I’m a visual guy,” the angler known as the “Crappie Psychic” explained. “I like to see the bite, not feel the bite. The cork pops up on its side, and then goes down.
“I see that in my sleep.”
He will fish as shallow as 6 inches under a cork in Lake Boeuf or as deep as 4 feet in canals and bayous.
When not using his own Crappie Psychic Slab Rattlers, he uses a 2-inch, weighted chartreuse-and-green Mr. Crappie Cork.
“It beats orange any day,” Folse said. “I firmly believe color attracts fish. And sac-a-lait are always looking up.”
He uses only 1/16-ounce jigheads and only one particular brand — Arkie.
“They are flat,” Folse explained, “so they give more movement, one or two direction twitches on the fall. Sometimes that is all it takes to entice a fish to bite.”
Folse uses florescent orange fingernail polish to paint eyes on the unpainted jigheads.
He is a stickler for every detail.
The grub he uses is always a black-and-pearl Bass Pro Shops Crappie Ringer. The reason: Every time he takes the bait out of the water, air gets trapped in the rings. After it goes back in, the first pop releases a couple of bubbles.
Folse spent a year fishing with Des Allemands’ Terry Meyer, trying to prove him wrong using the traditional crappie lure colors of black-and-chartreuse and blue-and-white.
All Meyer used with black-and-pearl.
“It was proved to me that black-and-pearl was the most consistent color combination,” Folse said. “I also like to tip my jig hook with pieces of chartreuse Berkley Gulp Maggots.”
It’s important to note that, since the fishing trip for this story, Folse has developed his own nibbles flavored with his own Psychic Sauce.
As for the color choice for the Crappie Psychic trailers, he simply recommends not using the same color as is the jig.
“Use something contrastin,” Folse said. “It makes it stick out.”
Five colors are available.
Folse’s son Caleb has different preferences.
First of all, he prefers to fish without a cork.
“I love to feel the bite,” the younger Folse said. “I feel more of a connection with the fish. I know how hard they are biting or if they are finicky.
“You can’t get that with a cork.”
Although he throws jigs and grubs, Caleb really likes underspin heads in flashy colors like red. His preference is a blue thunder Bobby Garland Baby Shad grub.
Finally, he always adds a Berkley Gulp Waxie, which he places between the grub and the trailer.
“Waxies are a good bit tougher than Maggots,” Caleb explained, “and putting the Waxie between the trailer and the grub gives the trailer more visibility.”
You can cover a lot more area with a spinner than with a jig and cork, he opined. Caleb typically makes straight retrieves, but sometimes he will vary it with a pulsing movement.
He controls the depth that the lure fishes by the speed of his retrieve.
