Photo by Tom Berg

Crappie anglers had another great season in the Bluegrass State last year. Our waters continue to produce some fine crappie angling each season.

Of course, sometimes it's necessary to change locations to find the hottest spots for that particular year.

At most every lake, crappie fisheries are cyclical. It's just the nature of the species. They will go through periods of excellent recruitment and growth -- and then for one reason or another, they will cycle down for a few years, with poor spawns and a subsequent drop in fishing success.

But not all lakes experience this cyclical pattern to the same degree. Some lakes have crappie fisheries that fluctuate constantly through extreme highs and lows. Other impoundments have fisheries that ebb and flow barely unnoticed -- at least by anglers.

Biologists keep a close watch on these patterns and provide fishing forecasts based on predictions for a coming year. Throughout the entire state, we've got numerous lakes that have good crappie fisheries.

With that in mind, here's a look at five hotspots within the state that should rank near the top for superb papermouth angling right now!

KENTUCKY LAKE
Our preeminent water for huge crappie has always been considered to be Kentucky Lake. Many anglers feel this is our best spot for landing whopper papermouths -- and with good reason. After all, some real big slabs have been pulled from this lake over the years.

Although Kentucky Lake is still producing some excellent crappie fishing, some changes have been ongoing there for several years. There may be more in the near future. The most significant one is the makeup of the crappie fishery.

In the past, white crappie made up the bulk of the lake's papermouth population. Due to numerous changes at the lake, however, black crappie are now more abundant.

Their numbers first peaked in 1997 when biologists recorded 63 percent of black crappie in their fall trap-netting sampling to be black crappie.

Since then, the number of black crappie in the samplings has soared to around 80 percent each year.

Unfortunately, anglers have not completely caught on how to fish for black crappie. Recent creel surveys showed the numbers of black crappie in the harvest to be only around 33 percent, despite the fact that black crappie far outnumber white crappie in the lake.

However, that figure was higher than the 2003 survey, which showed only 23 percent of the crappie in the creel as being black. That means anglers are starting to learn how to fish for them.

Black crappie tend to inhabit different areas of the lake than do the white crappie. They also tend to come shallow in the spring much earlier than white crappie: Studies have shown that black crappie move into shallow water about 1 to 2 weeks earlier than their white counterparts. Black crappie are sometimes found in stakebeds in only 24 inches of water as early as the first week of March.

Another thing to consider is that the spawn may be taking place a little sooner than in past years. Most anglers have expected shallow-water crappie fishing to coincide with a peak spawn time around April 15 each spring. However, biologist Paul Rister says with the recent milder winters and warmer spring temperatures, the spawn has often been occurring in late March and early April.