today at the lake i spent a few hours throwing just about everything i had in softplastics, lost about 3 rigs haha. but thats all in the game. and i finally decided to try a popper, even though it was mid day. to my surprise it made a lot of crappie active. then i hand fished the crappie with a small fly and some line around my hands. it seemed that the aggressive crappy going after the small fly i made was making the smaller bass come out to play. and soon they were all swimming and there was about 20 smaller fish swimming all around me. whats this mean? what would be the next step haha. does that mean i turned the fish on? and is this some type of technique im stumbling on?

Yes, fish get others excited. One cool thing I witnessed one day while fishing: I had a 4 lb LM on the line. While I was fighting him by the boat, the lizard had slid up my line about a foot. Other bass were trying to pull the lizard off the line while I had the other one hooked. I thought that was pretty cool.

without a doubt