As water temperatures head beyond 60 degrees, move into any shoreline cover you can find, and cast along stickups, flooded bank vegetation, and even stumpbeds. Take hard looks in Brier Creek near the dam, in the tributary creeks on Conoloway, and farther upriver where the next major arm at Rock Creek comes in. Fish ought to be in less than 8 feet of water when you find 60-degee surface temperatures, and along cover close to the bank, such as blowdowns. Watch what other anglers are doing, and when you see them connecting, find similar surroundings and drop anchor. It's sometimes amazing how consistent fish behavior is and the depths and cover preferences they choose throughout a reservoir.

TAYLORSVILLE LAKE
If you're looking for somewhere good down in the heart of the Bluegrass State, you might want to check out Taylorsville Lake in Anderson, Spencer and Nelson counties. It's our fourth choice of a spot that gets high marks for crappie this spring.

Biologist Kerry Prather is noticing a switch over to more black crappie in this lake, too, like what's been seen in Barkley and Kentucky lakes.

There's only a 9-inch size limit on crappie in Taylorsville, and Prather reports he's "got a whole lot more" fish at, or above 9 inches out there waiting to be caught. With less rainfall in the last couple of years, the remnant black crappie population in some lakes is beginning to stretch its legs in the clearer water conditions. White crappie like more turbid, dingy conditions in order to thrive, but some lakes haven't seen their usual water color in the spring in recent times.

"Actually, we've had a pretty good spawn of both black and white crappie the past couple of years, and we expect those year-classes to provide good fishing this spring and maybe for another year or two," Prather said.

"Timber cover is the primary habitat spring crappie will use, and over a few hours, anglers should be able to come up with their 15-fish limit if they work several spots.

"Once you determine how far down they are, you should look for other cover in that same range. Unless there's a great difference in water color or temperature, you should find fish at about the same depth in any of the embayments on the lake," Prather noted.

If you're going to connect with crappie on Taylorsville, then fishing woody cover is most often the ticket you'll need to cash in. Old trees in creeks and inlets will hold a lot of fish when they come shallow. Taylorsville has a lot of lumber in the water.

Get in there with minnows in Little Beech and Big Beech embayments, and move around until you find where they are. Fish around cover in the head of Ashes Creek, which is off to the right when you come out of Settler's Trace Marina. Remember, the characteristic of black crappie is to stay closer to the surface, so instead of starting deep and working up, you may want to try an opposite approach.

Live bait is tough to beat, but small jigs can sometimes be quicker and more effective. Have two or three colors of twistertails or jigheads in your tackle box to experiment with until you find what works best. Fish with the lightest weight you can. Smaller weights and sizes of trailers tend to catch both aggressive and less active fish sometimes, and make the fight a little more exciting on lighter tackle.

Using a combination jig tipped with a minnow also attracts hungry crappie, and these lures can usually be worked fairly easy through submerged tree limbs in 5 or 6 feet of water. Remember to approach cover as quietly as possible, and if you find a few fish in a given location, come back again later in the day. Crappie move in and out of cover, so if you take a few fish out, often others will take up the available habitat before the day is over.