The hundreds of private farm ponds and sandpit lakes in the state shouldn’t be forgotten -- together they serve up over 50 percent of the Master Angler fish. Of the public areas not surveyed last year, Calamus, Smith, Swanson and Harlan County shouldn’t be overlooked.

Crappie, which are members of the sunfish family, aren’t all that selective about what they will eat, or try to eat. Minnows or small fish of almost any kind are the most common forage for the fish. Worms and night crawlers will often work, but not as well as a minnow. Grasshoppers will catch some crappie, as will crayfish.

Artificials such as small spoons, spinners, small spinnerbaits, tube lures, jigs and small crankbaits catch crappie. Flyfishermen work on the two species with wet flies, poppers, streamers and bucktails.

When I allow myself time to think about some of the crappie bonanzas that I’ve been lucky enough to get in on, I recall a private oxbow lake along the Platte River near Valley. A fishing buddy of mine, Jack Higgins of Lincoln, and I used small white-skirted spinnerbaits to put the hurt on some “big ‘uns.”

We tossed the lures parallel to the shore -- out about 15 feet from the bank -- allowed them to sink a second or two and then started a slow retrieve. They got hammered by crappie in the 12- to 15-inch class. We each kept a half-dozen and then hooked and released another 30 or 40 in the same size-class. We’d fished the oxbow before, and caught a few big ones, but never in the numbers we did on that day.

My introduction to Nebraska crappie came back in the early 1960s after I’d just moved to the state from Michigan. Word had come that anglers were catching crappie by the dozens at Medicine Creek Reservoir, a fairly new impoundment northwest of Cambridge. Once I got to the 1,800-acre reservoir, I couldn’t believe my eyes: fishermen everywhere.

When I started looking at some of the stringers they were loading, I couldn’t help but check their tackle. Some were using a cane pole and bobber, some a light spinning rig with either a bobber-minnow combo or a jig on it; others were using a bait-casting outfit rigged up with a bobber about the size of a tennis ball and enough lead to cast halfway across the lake. A certain number were using a heavy-duty catfish rig and fishing the bottom with minnows, while a few were going with a two-hook crappie rig, and a very few were working a fly rod with streamers and bucktails. There was even one salty angler who’d rigged a new fly rod with a golf-ball-sized bobber, a 1/2-ounce sinker and a two-hook crappie rig. And, yes, they were all catching fish.

Having fished since I was 5 or 6 with everything from a willow pole to a very light fly rod, I had a hard time understanding why some of these fishermen were using such horrendously hefty rigs to catch 7- to 10-inch crappie. A couple of Nebraska conservation officers filled me in while checking my permit.