Savvy local anglers know that crappies tend to follow the water up the bank in this impoundment as spring progresses and the waters rise. They pay attention to what’s not covered today, knowing it will be covered by their next fishing trip. They pay careful attention to water depth and temperature, and almost never fish the same spot over and over.

A common, and successful, technique is flipping or pitching weightless minnows into the structure. Find a likely looking spot, toss your minnow out, and let it swim around, freestyle. If there’s a crappie nearby, and it is in an eating mood, you’ll know soon enough. Make sure you take along plenty of hooks and minnows. You’ll lose many in the structure.

There are four improved ramps on Mississinewa along with several other unimproved ones. For immediate, up-to-the-minute conditions, contact the Corps of Engineers at (765) 473- 5946 or over the Internet at www.lrl.usace.army.mil/miss/

CAGLES MILL LAKE
“Picking a spot for next year is always difficult, but I’d have to say Cagles Mill Lake is probably the best bet in west-central Indiana,” said Rhett Wisener, a District 5 fisheries biologist. “Back in 2004, the lake had a large population of small crappies, which should be thinned out by now.”

That’s polite language for the lake that was overrun four years ago with little fish. By 2008, most of them should have died off, been caught and eaten by humans, or been caught and eaten by bigger fish. With that in mind, Wisener theorizes that the population will be down substantially, but that those fish that did survive should be above average in length and weight.

Cagles Mill -- also called Cataract Lake because Cataract Falls is near its headwaters -- is a Corps of Engineers impoundment. As such, it’s used primarily for flood control. That means fluctuating water levels, especially during wet years or during unusually heavy rains.

“They hold it below winter pool a lot and then in the spring, especially if we have a lot of rain, they’ll fill it a long ways above summer pool,” Wisener said. “It’s also normally one of the last ones to be let down in the spring. That keeps the water high well into the warm weather months most years.”

Savvy local anglers know that crappies tend to follow the water up the bank in this impoundment as spring progresses and the waters rise.

Because of this pattern, the damage to the crappie spawn is not as severe as in most flood-control reservoirs. It often keeps the crappies in well-defined locations longer than in other waters. A well-defined location means offshore structure.

According to Wisener, most successful anglers will fish old creek channels with some woody cover adjacent to them. “The typical pattern is to move around over deeper spots until you find wood. That’s usually a sunken pile of drift, trees or maybe a stumpfield,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a manmade brushpile.”