Turtles on road a good sign of crappie on banks

Nevada Daily Mail

Harold Elliott, Mount Vernon, once told me that when the turtles are on the road, the crappie are on the bank. Recently I started seeing turtles on the road so I checked to see if the crappie were on the banks of both streams and lakes.

Stopping at the Caplinger Mills bridge at the dam over the Sac river, I found Les McPeak catching crappie by setting his bobber about 12-to-18 inches above his minnow-laden hook. McPeak said, "I use a 1/16th roadrunner head jig and tip it with a minnow, pitch it in the water and let it do it's thing. I have been making a trip over here for the past week or so and have caught crappie every time. If the water is running, the fishing is usually good."

Other anglers using the same method were Darrell Smith, Springfield and Gary Mangun, Osceola. Paul Pile another angler from Joplin, said "I have heard the old saying about the turtles on the road and crappie on the banks for a long time and it usually works out that way. I watch the temperature and when the water reaches 60 degrees I head for Table Rock where I know the crappie will be. Should the temperature drop a degree or two, the fish move back to deeper water, but when it's right, you can catch a limit of crappie in a short time."

Crappie anglers know starting in late April and early May, the catching can be excellent as the fish move into the banks for their annual spawning run. This makes for an ideal situation getting a limit of those tasty fish. Veteran crappie anglers say that if you can't catch crappie in the spring, you just aren't a true crappie angler.

Nelson Martin, a Kansas City crappie fisherman, has been pulling fish from a special cove on Truman Lake in early May for years. He said, "I use small yellow or white jigs, but just about any minnow type lure will catch fish if you put it in the right place. Look for pea-gravel banks and cast close to shore. You might need to use a bobber to keep from getting hooked up. If the water temperature is 60 degrees or higher, it is just right for catching spawning crappie close to the bank."

Like other anglers, Martin has caught his share of other species of fish while searching for slab crappie. He recalled one time on Truman, he cast out and his bobber disappeared as soon as it hit the water. A big bass jumped out of the shallow water which Martin described as "the largest bass he had ever seen."

He was using a four pound test line, the fight didn't last long. The big bass gobbled up the jig and kept going.

Many of Missouri's big impoundments have a 10-inch minimum length limit. Truman and the Lake of the Ozarks have a 9-inch limit at present, but the Missouri Department of Conservation is looking at both lakes and might change the limit there to 10-inches in the future.

Crappie anglers can catch fish all year long, but for the next week or so, it will be the prime-time for catching limits of big crappie in area lakes. Some days the fish might be near the bank in shallow water, but the next day they might be in water 10-feet deep. The fishing can be like the weather, but now that May is moving along, the fishing can be more predictable as the fish move close to the banks to spawn.

Crappie anglers agree that when it comes to good table fare, you can't beat a mess of crappie. There are many species of Missouri fish that fight hard and are fun to catch, but you will find that it's hard to beat crappie for the table.

Now is the time to go after them.