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Published Saturday April 9, 2005 April and May are prime months for crappie BY LARRY PORTER
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

The power windows of the Suburban's front doors slid silently into their envelopes, and Howie Anderson eased to a stop along the dirt trail.

Howie Anderson with a 14-inch black crappie that is likely 5 or 6 years old.

"Look at the deer," Anderson whispered as three whitetails peered from the woods less than 20 yards from the vehicle. "And look at the turkeys," he added, swinging his gaze only a few yards to where two toms, their long beards practically dragging along the ground, gave scant attention to the vehicle as they meandered through the trees.

Black or white? • Black crappie prefer clear water, while white crappie fare better in more turbid water. • Black crappie have seven or eight hard spines on their dorsal fins. White crappie have six hard dorsal spines. • White crappie have faint vertical lines along their sides. The sides of black crappie are mottled. • Both black and white males get much darker during the spawning period.

This was the frosting that Anderson had promised when he extended an invitation to fish for crappie on a sandpit in Douglas County. The heavily wooded area, indeed, harbored large numbers of deer and turkeys.

This was a reunion of sorts. Anderson and I inhabited some of the same Council Bluffs Thomas Jefferson classrooms 45 years ago. Even then, Howie was crazy about fishing. It got much worse as the years passed.

The Husker Bass Club in 1972 became the first in Nebraska to affiliate with BASS. Anderson, who now lives in Omaha, has been a member of the club since 1981.

Although Anderson specializes in bass, he is an opportunistic angler. If something is biting, he wants to catch it.

Right now, crappie are taking center stage in the Midlands. They normally spawn in late April, but they move into shallow water in late March.

"If you want to have any chance of catching a lot of crappie, this is the time to do it," said Dave Tunink, assistant chief of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission's fisheries division. "April and May is peak time for crappie. After that, they go deep, and they're much more difficult to catch."

Anderson piled our gear onto a small pontoon boat and headed across the sandpit to an area where several trees had deliberately been felled into the water to create shoreline habitat. He dropped an anchor, then used a loop knot to unite a 16th-ounce leadhead jig to his 6-pound line.

The use of a loop knot, Anderson said, significantly reduces the number of times a jig is snagged on a tree limb or other underwater obstruction.

To prove his point, Anderson extended an index finger, draped the line over it and slowly pulled up the jig. As the jig reached the finger, it pivoted on its side, and Howie pulled it over without having the hook dig into flesh.

Anderson then used a clinch knot to attach another jig. He snubbed the knot directly to the eye of the jig, then once more draped the line over an extended finger. As the jig neared the finger, the hook remained straight down. Had Howie given a sharp tug, the hook would have speared his skin.

"Fewer snags, by far," Anderson said after the convincing demonstration.

The water was so transparent that the bottom was clearly visible in 10 feet of water. Anderson threaded a white plastic body onto the jig and flipped it into a maze of tangled limbs near the shore. He watched the jig fall toward a limb, then twitched his rod tip. The jig rose a bit, then fell. Another twitch.

The jig sank about three inches, then a black shadow moved from the mass of limbs. The jig disappeared. Anderson didn't have to feel the bite.

"When you can't see the jig," he said, "a fish has it. Set the hook."

Anderson followed his own advice and soon extracted a 14-inch black crappie from the net. He released the fish, then caught a 15-incher. His third measured 13 inches.

Crappie that size caught in southeast Nebraska might be 5 or 6 years old, according to Tunink.

"It'll take four years to get a 10-inch crappie here, while it'll take only two or three years in Kansas to get a 10-inch crappie," the fisheries biologist said.

The slower growth rate in Nebraska is why minimum length limits for crappie result in only marginal success.

"They'll die of natural causes before they grow to 10 inches," Tunink said. "It's rare to find a crappie in southeast Nebraska that's older than 4 or 5 years old."

Crappie will grow faster in a farm pond, sandpit or small lake if there aren't many of them.

"If you have a body of water that produces 12- to 15-inch crappie," Tunink said, "it also has a high density of small largemouth bass in the 10- to 15-inch range. Those bass control the crappie. If you don't have all those small bass, crappie will take over your pond. You'll have nothing but small, stunted crappie.

"If you value 14- or 15-inch crappie, you don't want to harvest any bass. But you won't catch those big crappie hand over fist because there aren't many of them."

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