PERRY RESERVOIR
At 12,600 acres Kansas' third-largest reservoir, Perry is a perennial powerhouse of crappie production. When conditions are right, this body of water in northeast Kansas is generally a good bet for robust crappie spawns.

"It's been that way for a long time," declared KDWP biologist Kirk Tjelmeland. "We have traditionally good shad spawns, so we have a good condition of fish, and so we get good production out of them. It's a crappie factory most years."

Low-water conditions during the last few years may have kept Perry from giving up really big numbers and sizes of crappie, but even in down years, it's still pretty good. And since normal water conditions returned last spring, things are looking up once again.

"When we seined last August, I saw the most young-of-the-year crappie that I've seen for a long time," Tjelmeland reported. "We had a lot of flooded vegetation, as the water was rising during the spawn, and it was good."

According to Tjelmeland, Perry can offer the best of both worlds in some years: big numbers of fish as well as big fish. "In some years when we have good year-classes we'll have lots of fish," the biologist said, "and a lot of them will get harvested when they hit 10 inches. Then, a couple of years later, the ones left of that year-class will be big fish. We always have those 2-pound-plus fish running around out there."

Owing to its proximity to the Topeka and Kansas City metro areas -- some of Kansas' and Missouri's biggest concentrations of people -- Perry gets more than its share of fishing pressure. "If you go back and look at creel data, it's probably one of the highest ones," Tjelmeland observed. "These days, fishermen are so mobile that if fish are biting somewhere, they'll get on their phones, and they're there."

Plenty of promising springtime fishing prospects await both boaters and bank-anglers, Tjelmeland believes. "If you've got a boat, either the Rock Creek or Slough Creek area is good anywhere there's habitat," he said. "The past couple of years habitat has been really limited with the low water, but this year there will be lots of 4- to 6-foot flooded cottonwoods and willows, so it will be hard to find a favorite spot, as the fish should be stacked in there. Guys that take off wading around in that stuff fishing in 1 foot to 1 1/2 feet of water will do well."

Other areas known for yielding up nice messes of slab-sided crappie during the spring are the rocky riprap along DJ's and Highway 92 causeway at Slough Creek. "They're not always real accessible to shoreline fishermen, because it's hard to get down the rocks sometimes," Tjelmeland said.

Tjelmeland enjoys fishing for crappie as much as the next guy, and has a favorite technique that produces fish for him year in and year out. "I like putting a tube jig 18 inches underneath a bobber and pitching it out and running parallel to the bank with it on a slow retrieve," he said. "You can put a minnow on there and sit and watch it -- and a lot of people do that, too -- and catch a lot of fish, but I don't care to sit there that long."

Given adverse water conditions over the last few years, Tjelmeland looks for his overall numbers of crappie to be down a little for legal fish compared to normal levels. "But," he added, "I expect in the next two or three years it will be back up there where it should be."