“Crappie populations fluctuate,” McDonnell said. “The fishing will be really good for two or three years and then go bust for a while, but eventually the crappie numbers will take off again. The trick is to hit the lake when the population is going upward and you do that by calling your fisheries management biologist and asking him which waters are going in that direction. Check in with bait shops and other good sources of information as well. That’s the way I always approach it. Doing your homework is very important if you want to stay on top of where crappies are biting.”

For additional information, contact the Division of Fish and Wildlife’s (DFW) District 5 office at (765) 342-5527, the Summit Lake State Park at (765) 766-5873 or Miller’s Great Outdoors at (765) 766-5873.

LAKE WAVELAND
“For an up-and-coming crappie fishery I’d pick Waveland,” biologist Schoenung said. “The crappie fishing should just about be ready to turn on following the renovation in 2002. This lake will follow the norm and be an April and May fishery with good fishing again in September and October.”

Waveland’s fate was sealed when the shad population exploded several years ago. The shad competed with young game fish for food, and as in some other Indiana waters, the shad took over. In 2002, the lake was drawn down and fish of all species were killed.

The DFW restocked the lake with black crappies in the fall of 2003. Well over 71,000 papermouths were released into the lake and are now big enough to harvest.

“We haven’t seen a lot of the crappies yet,” said Don Bickel, a local angler and outdoor column writer for the local newspaper in Crawfordsville.

There have been a few nice crappies caught along the riprap near the dam, but most of the anglers here are fishing for bluegills, Bickel said. He expects the crappie fishing will really take off fast this spring, especially off the riprap near the dam and in the bay to the east of the dam.

Waveland is acting like a new lake in its boom phase. Bickel prefers to take slabs with a minnow, but small tube jigs work, too. Try a number of colors until you find what the fish want and go from there, Bickel said, but it’s the black and chartreuse that produce for him. Minnows are the mainstay and will tell anglers where the fish are. Anglers can always switch to tube jigs once the fish are located.

Finding where the crappies will be hitting is going to take some experimentation this spring, Bickel said. The fishery is new and where the crappies will be is anyone’s guess. Bluegill anglers in the shallower end of the lake haven’t been connecting with too many crappies, though few anglers have been looking for them.

Waveland Lake covers 358 acres in Montgomery and Parke counties and is two miles west of Waveland.

Contact the DFW’s Southern Region office at (812) 279-1215 or the South Boulevard Sports and Bait Shop in Crawfordsville at (765) 362-0129 for more information. The Waveland Park office can be reached at (765) 435-2073.

PATOKA LAKE
Patoka is a lake with the crappie population on the upswing. According to fisheries biologist Dan Carnahan, the crappie fishery has become much better than it was in 2003. Numbers from the latest DFW survey haven’t been crunched yet, but the outlook is promising.

“The crappie harvest is way up,” Carnahan said. “There were 79,000 crappies taken home between April 1 and June 30, 2007, and they averaged 9 1/2 inches. The 2003 survey covered April 1 through Oct. 31, and during the entire sampling, the DFW found that only 57,000 crappies were harvested with a slightly smaller average length.

The number of fish is normally high in Patoka, Carnahan said. Catching the larger fish is usually the problem.

Patoka doesn’t seem to go through the exaggerated boom-and-bust phases that other lakes do. Every year crappie reproduction has been fairly consistent.

According to Carnahan, early spring fishing is good in the Patoka River channel up from the Walls Ramp and the Little Patoka Arm. When the redbuds start blooming, the fishing really takes off.

“The crappie tournaments in the spring are usually fishing toward the main lake basin in the deeper water,” said Oscar Hoffman of Jeff’s Bait and Gun Shop.

“In the early spring, anglers usually launch from the Jackson State Recreation Area or the Walls Lake Ramp and fish in those areas, but a lot of crappie fishermen do prefer to put in at the Little Patoka Ramp.”