Building a Better Crossover Angler

A journey to expand your fishing and the inherent issues with only fishing one way

Aug 19, 2025

EDITORS NOTE: New videos, gear and more below this article

My first fish that I can remember catching as a small child was a crappie. My most memorable early fish was a bass. My most memorable catch of all time was a brown trout. I suspect being a skilled crossover angler has somewhat been ingrained in me from an early age.

But it wasn’t until the last decade that I realized how much I had limited my fishing knowledge and ability by just fishing for one fish and listening to too many other anglers. And your realize how much better your fishing can be when you cross disciplines.

WHAT IS A CROSSOVER ANGLER

A crossover angler just refers to the ability to take things from one genre of fishing and apply it to another genre. Or simply applying fishing patterns for one species to other species. While some will say multispecies anglers are crossover anglers, that’s not necessarily true in my opinion. I think you can fish for lots of different kinds of fish. But if you only fish for crappie one way and never fish that way for bass or other species then you are not really crossing over your fishing. You are simply just fishing for other fish in other ways.

Nothing wrong with any of it. I should probably preface this by saying I don’t believe my way is better than anyone else’s way. In fact I am a HUGE proponent of you fishing the way that gives you the most enjoyment. If you love Livescoping crappie, man, go for it. If you love trolling, which by the way is not fishing to me, I still say go for it. Just because something is not my cup of tea, who am I to say someone else shouldn’t do that if it’s the way they love to do it. Whatever gets someone excited about fishing, I am all for it.

A lot of what I do in my own fishing is testing my approaches and theories around fishing. Some people think I have a bad day when I don’t catch anything. I experiment a lot. Inherent in that is knowing you will have days where you completely whiff and strike out. You can’t grow as an angler, or in any discipline for that matter, if you are never pushing up against your boundaries or what you always do in any pursuit. You’ll just always be as good as you are now.

And full disclosure, some days I just go to catch ‘em on my obvious patterns I’ve figured out over the years with very little thought. Sometimes I use fishing to decompress too just like I believe most anglers do. But I’m always trying to find ways to help anglers get better. And a lot of that means I have to experiment and test tackle and fish a lot of new waters and continually put a lot of thought into everything around fishing in the hopes that I can help someone else get there too. And my hope is I can plant an idea in someone’s head and they will run with it and expand it out even further than I have.

THE PROBLEM WITH FISHING FOR ONE FISH

Again I don’t have anything against any one kind of angler. Meaning I don’t begrudge catfishermen, or saltwater guys or fly fishermen or bass fishermen. But I do think if you only fish for one fish, all the time, you are more likely to get into ruts and one dimensional thinking and eventually you will have a very narrow scope to your fishing where you will only catch them in certain situations and seasons and be very limited in other times. Especially when conditions change or get volatile (flooding, current, no current, low oxygen, dropping water levels, etc).

I also believe fish get conditioned. One of the things I tell folks who have deep conversations about fishing with me is that I actually became a better fisherman when I stopped fishing tournaments. While fishing for one fish can be problematic. Fishing for one fish the way you hear and see everyone fish for them is incredibly limiting. Tournament anglers more than any other type of angler have a real tendency to parrot. They will chase bites they heard about and do things not very well with limited experience because someone else said that’s how they were being caught.

I learned early on to ignore most dock talk. Most dock talk is done by guys who heard something and don’t actually have any firsthand experience about what they are saying. So you get second hand information pawned off as if it is there own. Which is often more misleading than helpful. So I just never listen to it.

Instead, I tend to explore more. And the more days I do that, especially close together, the easier it is for me now to adapt to whatever I find on the water. And it’s what generally yields my best catches.

WHERE CROSSOVER HELPS

I didn’t realize the importance of crossover in fishing until I started applying things I learned in crappie fishing to bass fishing. And even things I learned in panfishing to trout fishing. I’ve had several things I’ve learned fly fishing help me present lures better in conventional spin fishing. So because I have a newer open mind about it, I’ve been able to improve nearly every facet of my own fishing.

It wasn’t always like that. I was hardheaded for a long time. It would be May, and I would say it’s bush flipping time. So, I’d grab my jig and go flip bushes all day and only catch a handful of fish. Then as I started crossing over. I remembered dipping trees for crappie and how you often just held the jig up and shook it a little and got those crappie to bite. They were there. But you had to make the bait act like they expected it to.

So I started downsizing my flipping baits to the smaller versions of plastics and my catch rate both in size and amount went sky high. I can remember when I learned to pull the bait up and hold it up high in the bush and shake it, how many more bites I started getting. It made me realize there were so many more nuances in the patterns I had learned and thought I was really good at already.

The last couple of years, I’ve adopted a reel-drop retrieve for panfish. And it’s accounted for some dynamite days red ear and bluegill fishing. I actually applied that reel-drop retrieve to trout fishing this year on a trip to the White and Norfork Rivers. I had been struggling to get a bite while my guide buddy was wearing them out in the front of the boat. I decided to stop trying to mimic his every move and just fish what felt right given the current and our drift. I started reel-dropping and gliding my jigs more and suddenly I was hooked up on several big rainbow trout over and over. Some of my biggest I’ve caught thus far.

Realizing that so much of what we learn in fishing can be carried forward and applied into different genres has opened so many memorable experiences for me. I believe it will for others as well. So it’s one of my missions with my content as I go forward. I want to give you new things to think about in your fishing and newer approaches to one way of fishing borrowed from successful patterns in other genres.

All of this is also now leading to developing some crossover lures and techniques and that has me really excited as well.

TEAR DOWN THE ELITEST CAMPS IN FISHING

One of the things that still plagues fishing in my opinion is the elitest mentality. I have never understood the mentality that someone’s way of fishing is better than another. I don’t believe in trolling. I don’t consider that fishing because of the lack of casting and working a lure to fool a fish. But I don’t begrudge anyone who loves trolling. If people love fishing that way, I think that is awesome. And I know some folks, that’s the only way they can fish because of a disability or age. So again I want people to get out and fish however it makes them happiest within the rules and regs.

But you have pockets of anglers who think they are more important because they only fly fish, or only fish for bass, or only go after catfish, or only saltwater fish. I’ve heard all the self-justifying reasons like they only fish for giant fish, they only power fish, bass are too little, trout are too dumb, fly fishing requires more skill … blah, blah, blah.

My hope with promoting a crossover mentality in fishing is to help tear down the barriers the elitest camps try to erect and create an atmosphere of idea sharing and brainstorming across genres.

I am a bit of an old school guy when it comes to fishing. So I want to preserve some of the incredible knowledge that is stored in a wide array of niches related to fishing. I have borrowed so many ideas from fly guys, panfish guys, trout guys and of course bass guys. All of which has made me a uniquely better angler. I just don’t prescribe to the notion that any one niche supersedes or lands above any other in the hierarchy.

I constantly search for rewarding experiences and memories through fishing. I hope to bring others to similar experiences with an opening of thinking around fishing. All of the fish pictured in this article were caught between March 2025 and August 2025. I feel like my ability to crossover yields a lot better fishing for me of every kind and every way.

TODAY’S LATEST VIDEO

I shared my first fly tie of the series. I will be uploading a bunch of these from bluegill bugs that you can cast on spinning gear to the smallest flies for catching trout. This is my take on an olive wooly bugger that I call the DubL Olive Bugger. Because I use two variations of olive marabou and two variations of olive dubbing. So I’m doubling up on materials across the whole fly. Let me know if you want a bunch more tackle tweaks like these. I will do some more fly tying but also how I rig stuff for bass, panfish, crappie and more.

GEAR I’M LOVING RIGHT NOW

I’m going to share some of the gear I’ve been using a lot as I go forward with these posts and emails. So I can continue to keep folks informed about good tackle worth fishing as I come across it.

B’n’M Leland’s TCB UL Rod

If you’ve seen my social media lately, you’ve seen I’ve been downsizing on the lakes for crappie and other fish because of the mood of the fish in this brutally hot weather. Light line and small lures have been working better, so I’ve been using my TCB rod a lot. It’s a do-all rod for light line fishing. I like 2 and 4-pound line on it with 1/32 to 1/16-ounce lures. It’s a great 2-piece rod I take EVERYWHERE with me for trout, crappie, bluegills, wading streams and more. Find the TCB here.

Dai-Riki Hooks

The very popular Japanese hook brand Dai-Riki fly hooks has been reacquired by US company FishUSA. These hooks are affordable, strong and great to tie on. I’ve been busy loading my fly box with these new hooks with a lot of new ties I’m sharing on my YouTube as I go. Check out the Dai-Riki Hook lineup here.

Ark Fishing BFS Rod

This new Ark BFS bass rod has a great action, small blank diameter and very good backbone for bait finesses system fishing. I’ve been creek fishing with it a bunch this summer and I love it for super precise casting. Check out this video of it in action here. And you can buy it here.

Trout Magnet Tungsten Panfish Heads

This is one of my babies I’m excited about finally having available for other avid panfish anglers like me. I’ve had a hand in getting this head ready for release and I can safely say this is the BEST bluegill / shellcracker jighead on the market now. It should be available this fall on TroutMagnet.com.

Megabass Karashi

Over the last two years, this has become one of my favorite hard baits to fish for a wide variety of fish. I’ve caught catfish, crappie, smallmouth, largemouth, spots, white bass and even some gills, red ears and a few trout. It’s simply a fish catcher. It fishes a lot like a glide bait or a walking topwater except it can fish under the surface. It’s such a fun bait to fish and has become one my creek wading staples now! Check out the Megabass Karashi here.

BL8NKT Striker 6 Glide Bait

This is my latest glide bait purchase and I’m in love with these baits. They are so responsive and have some of the best paint jobs in the space. I love the swim on these and this glide will be on my rod for the rest of the year. Check them out here.

Island Optics OX2 G Mineral Glass Sunglasses

I am a big fan of the Island Optics sunglasses and they finally have made glass sunglasses with their new OX2 G Mineral Glass Sunglasses. The beautiful thing here is you get high end glass lenses sunglasses for under $200. Meaning you get high quality glass sunglasses at a price you normally pay for polycarbonate sunglasses from the other guys. And they have arguably the best options for prescription sunglasses. Check them out here.

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