Summer Crappie Fishing

There are two ponds about 45 seconds away from my house (on a bike), and I fish them extremely often, so I have pretty much every species in the pond "figured out" and I can usually decide to fish for a certain species on a certain day, no matter the conditions (there are exceptions). So this summer we decided to try for crappies.
    We discovered the fish when we were casting small grubs at the dam and fishing them very slowly, catching 8-12 inchers on almost every cast. We weren't planning on crappie fishing that day so we kind of shrugged it off as a fluke and went about bass fishing for the rest of the day.
    3 or 4 days later, I decided I wanted to prove to my dad that crappies don't simply shut down in the summer, so I called a friend and asked him if he would like to come fish with my brother and I for crappies that day. His reaction was pretty much "Crappies? In August?" I told him that we would catch them and not to worry.
    We loaded up in the canoe with ultra light setups and trout magnets. We anchored up at the spot near the dam where we previously caught crappies and started fishing. The technique for the day was to cast the magnet and let it fall untill the line stopped. Then we would slowly twitch it and I mean SLOWLY untill a fish bit. The bite was VERY subtle, it pretty much felt like the bait hung up in grass, but the "grass" was usually a crappie.
     My brother Wyatt set the hook and said "This is a good one" followed by the sound of the drag on the Sahara 1500 screaming. He got the fish to the boat and I netted it, about a 3.5 pound largemouth, released to fight another day. This really proves that big bait does not always mean big fish, because a trout magnet weighs 1/64oz and is about an inch long. We caught about 40 crappies in the 3 hours we fished, with about 5 largemouth topping 2 pounds, and maybe 15 sunfish. Thanks for reading!