Writing this story turned out to be tougher that its title would suggest. You'd think that it'd be easy to talk to the folks who know about the overall health of Kansas' crappie fisheries and put together a report on the best waters around for crappie anglers to plan their fishing seasons by.

I wish!

You see, few Kansas crappie waters are not good places to catch the fish -- and therein lies the problem: In a state with an abundance of lakes large and small that simply appear to be crappie factories, narrowing the list to include the best of the best is tough. It's been that way for as long as I can remember.

Then, to add even more difficulty to the equation, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks embarked four years ago on a new venture known as the Community Fisheries Assistance Program. It's something like the "walk-in access" program that the state has been using to expand hunter and angler access for several years, in which the state, in essence, leases hunting and fishing rights from landowners in return for providing appropriate insurance coverage, signage and basic oversight. Literally hundreds of thousands of acres have been enrolled in the program.

CFAP does something similar with community impoundments all over the Sunflower State. The KDWP leases fishing and boating rights from the communities that owned and previously managed access to these small lakes. Instead of having to buy additional local fishing licenses and boat tags, Kansans now have access to CFAP waters on the basis of having their state fishing license and boat numbers.

"When we started the program, nobody could have predicted how gasoline prices would escalate like they have," said fisheries biologist Kyle Austin, who works out of KDWP headquarters in Pratt. "We know that CFAP is now making it possible for people to still enjoy fishing without having to travel so far from home to do it.

"Folks are still buying licenses and enjoying all the fisheries Kansas has to offer, and CFAP is contributing to that."

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some Kansans haven't fully embraced the program because it has exposed some of their favorite "unknown" fishing hotspots to new anglers. If I still lived as close to Lake Olathe as I did throughout most of the 1980s, I'd be among them!

Lake Olathe is one of the small community impoundments on Austin's list of "best crappie waters" in Kansas for 2009. From here, the lake could have been on the list a long time ago if CFAP had been in place and folks could have just shown up and fished without worrying about finding a city license and boat tags.

The KDWP lists the impoundment at 172 acres. Back when I called it my true home lake, it would drop quite a bit in mid-to-late summer because the city pulled water to keep the greens and fairways of the adjacent city golf course as green and healthy as possible. At this time of year, though, Lake Olathe generally is at or fairly close to full, presuming that part of eastern Kansas has enjoyed at least average amounts of moisture through the fall and winter.