Expectations high, Kansas anglers are likely to be dusting off the rods and reels in anticipation of a successful spring at their favorite fishing holes. Bass and walleye anglers are looking forward to warmer waters, but there may not be a more anxious bunch of anglers than the ones waiting for the crappie to start their spawning activities.

More crappie are caught by Kansas anglers in the spring than at any other time of year, and there isn't a better way to spend a nice spring day than by chunking a minnow and bobber combination into shoreline structure and then watching it suddenly disappear.

While rewarding crappie fishing can be had at many bodies of water in the Sunflower State, certain among those venues are just naturally better than the rest. Some have plenty of nice-sized slabs in the 9- to 10-inch range; a few others turn out real lunkers -- some more than a foot long! An ideally balanced lake would offer a decent complement of both.

Many factors determine fishing success -- among them, water temperature, water clarity, angling skills, fishing pressure, density of fish, and weather. While many of these factors are out of our control, you can increase your odds for success by fishing in reservoirs with solid crappie populations.

Here's a look at some of Kansas' better locales for white crappie, according to the most recent information published by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

LOVEWELL RESERVOIR
Lying in north-central Kansas near the Nebraska border, Lovewell Reservoir is a 2,986-acre impoundment with plenty of papermouths.

"Lovewell had been good for crappie back in the '70s," said Scott Waters, a fisheries biologist with the KDWP, "and people just forgot about it. And then in 2000-2001 we had a couple of really big year-classes, and they really started catching a bunch of those the last couple of years."

There were high hopes for last year, but, Waters reports, the fishing was good for a shorter period of time during the spring. He says that the lake was 10 feet low during the previous winter, which concentrated the fish, making them more susceptible to angling harvest.

"The water level was raised about 3 feet in the spring in preparation for irrigation," he explained, "and there was a lot of flooded smartweed and other vegetation all around the lake. There was so much habitat to spawn that the fish were really spread out and not concentrated."

Although some anglers didn't believe that there was much of a crappie spawn last year, Waters sampled the irrigation canal below the dam to estimate the number of fish lost during irrigation releases. "We estimated that we lost about 300,000 young-of-the-year crappie, so that's a pretty high number," he said. "That does indicate there was a pretty good spawn."

Despite the large quantities of fish harvested recently, Waters is optimistic that Lovewell will be a worthy crappie-fishing destination. "I still think there's pretty decent numbers, but I don't think we'll see anything like what we saw in 2004 for a while," he remarked. "I think everything just came together that year to make them real easy to find and catch."

Anglers fishing Lovewell Reservoir can do so from a boat or, in some areas, from shore. According to Waters, one of the more popular hotspots is Montana Creek. "The marina cove area has some brushpiles, and along the shoreline there are some really good areas to try," he said. "And a couple of other areas people don't fish all that often -- but they're pretty good -- are the Oak Hill Area, because we put a bunch of brush in there, and John's Creek on the south side."