Excellent populations of black bass, bluegills, brown trout, crappies, coho salmon, flathead catfish, hybrid stripers, muskies, northern pike, saugers, steelhead, walleyes and white bass abound across the state.

And though 36 picks are quite a lot to choose from, in Indiana, that's just the tip of a very big iceberg. Picking a good place to fish in Hoosierland is difficult because there's so much to choose from.

Who said you can't have it all?

JANUARY
Lake Wawasee: Stripers
January has Hoosier anglers looking north. Lake Wawasee, four miles south of Syracuse, offers some of the best winter crappie fishing in the state. With 3,410 acres of water to fish, anglers can nearly always harvest enough fillet-size crappies for dinner.

Professional wildlife biologist Steve Roth manages the Tri-County Fish and Wildlife Area (FWA). This puts him in charge of Lake Wawasee. He is also an avid crappie angler.

According to Roth, the lake is productive, despite heavy fishing pressure because it offers crappies what they need to survive and prosper. "There's plenty of clear, shallow water with several deep channels that cut across the lake. Combine this with some wood and a few weeds and you have what it takes to make a quality crappie fishery," he said.

Roth points with pride to the fact that 12-inch crappies are common and 14-inch specimens are possible, even likely.

Macys Slip is the hotspot on the lake in January. It's shallow -- 3 to 6 feet deep -- with numerous channels crossing the area. It holds huge numbers of quality crappies all winter long.

The area around the lake is heavily developed and there is limited shore access. Roth recommends contacting local residents early in the season for permission to park and fish.

FEBRUARY
Lake Michigan: Brown Trout
Four years ago, for the first time in 20 years, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) released brown trout into Lake Michigan. They have been doing it on an annual basis ever since.

The results are beginning to show. The 35,000 fish are now well over the 14-inch minimum length limit imposed on harvesting brown trout. Those fish can be expected to range between 18 and 22 inches in length this year.

Of course, there were some browns there before that, so there is always the possibility of a true trophy. A 20-pound brown trout was caught in 2003.

According to the Lake Michigan office of the DNR, the success of the brown trout program can be attributed to the early warming of the lake's waters along the Indiana border. It's much shallower than the rest of the lake and gets a little help from the discharges in the area.

MARCH
Patoka Lake: Largemouth Bass
Located in the south-central part of our state, 8,880-acre Patoka Lake offers some of the best early-season largemouth bass fishing in the state.

Kelly Ingle is a serious tournament angler. He fishes the largemouth bass circuit and is a regular winner on Patoka. Ingle opines that March on Patoka is one of the best opportunities a Hoosier angler will ever have for catching both high numbers of largemouths as well as big ones.

Water temperatures should be in the mid- to high 40-degree range at this time of year. That's just about right to start the largemouths on their annual spring migration toward the spawning beds.

The better fish will hold along the deeper weedbeds at this time of year, maybe in the 15-foot range or just a little shallower. The shad, at least those that survived the winter, will be moving up along these weedy areas and on toward the standing timber.