A friend recently introduced me to a small river nearby that I really enjoy fishing. If you're familiar with MO at all it's the Grand River at Settle's Ford. It feeds into Truman Lake around Sparrowfoot.

I'm new to fishing on rivers other than fly fishing for trout. I'd like some tips for catching crappie and catfish in a smallish river. I plan on hitting this spot a few times this year and I want to be successful. After 2 trips for crappie it hasn't worked out for me so great.

Thanks!

catfish are easy. Just put some chicken livers on a hook, add some split shot, and chunk it out there and wait.

Crappie are a tad more difficult. You have to find them, and I don't just mean where they are in relation to you, but how deep they are. Also, crappie tend to feed up, so you'll want your lure/bait suspending right above them. They love structure too, so if you find a bunch of rocks or a fallen tree, fish a few feet from it. They are usually schooled pretty deep, so if you find one, there are plenty more. I love sitting out with a bucket of minnows and catching them. Don't set the hook too hard either, as they have really thin mouths and you'll rip the hook out. They are the best eating freshwater fish IMO.

I'm not much of a fisherman but around here, the catfish are best caught where turbulent water meets calm water, they eat all the churned up food there.

I need to do chicken livers more. Hotdogs are always just so easy to grab. I also got into using cut bait for a few years.

Nothing seems to do as well as chicken livers.

Chicken livers are going to land you channel cats.   Throw a big hook through a live blue gill and you could easily catch a 20-40 pound flathead.

I have always done well in a narrow stretch of river I fish by floating descent sized minnows around after a rain, but yeah chicken livers is a sure bet as well, lately floating small jigs like 1/16 or 1/32oz under a float has got me some descent crappie in the spring.

I don't know catfish at all, but crappie are more along my cup of tea.  Using a weedless 16th ounce jig find you some trees down into the water where the top of the tree is way out in the deeper water.  Cast up to the base and slowly run it over the branches coming back to you(assuming you are in a boat).  Crappie tend to bite when it falls off the branch, and their bites tend to be very light(not like the tap tap of a blue gill or the hard hit of a bass).  They will sometimes simply carry the jig off.  I like a little wind to carry the line so you "see" it tense up when you get a bite.  

Like said above, don't set the hook too hard, they are called "paper mouths" for a reason.  

Around here, when it's hard to catch them, you will usually get one good one from a spot then they are done.  Later in the evening you might get into them a little better at a single spot.

Look up "drop shot" rig on you tube.   Use your fly rod or light spinning rod to to present small minnow type jigs to panfish. If you should score a few smallish blue gill , utilize them for bait for catfish.  A small fillet of bluegill with the skin left on but with the scales removed will produce larger catfish. Using liver can be a stinky, sticky and unproductive waste of time because of the little catfish tend to get to your bait before the big ones do !   Good luck on whatever you do .

This guy summed all that I know up