Victoria Sinfelt holds up a good-sized crappie. Specimens like this one are prevalent in the waters featured in this forecast. Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

Spring is just around the corner --and that spells excitement for papermouth enthusiasts. Crappie fishing is extremely popular with Kentucky anglers, and with good reason.

Here in the Bluegrass State, we have our fair share of outstanding crappie waters that produce both good numbers and huge slabs.

Crappie fishing success can ebb and flow at any particular lake. In many waters, crappie are typically cyclical. The fishing will go through periods of being really good and then fall off and go through a down cycle.

Here in Kentucky, fortunately, we don't see a lot of lakes whose fisheries usually go through huge swings, but during certain years, they do see incremental changes.

The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) stays on top of the situation and does a great job of maintaining the fisheries in the best possible conditions.

This spring should offer up a great opportunity to go out and catch a boatload of slabs. Across our state, our fisheries are in great shape. With some help from Ma Nature, your success will be only a cast or two away.

Here are a few of the places you might want to target this year.

KENTUCKY & BARKLEY LAKES
Anglers looking to supersize their catch this spring will probably want to venture into western Kentucky, to this crappie-fishing paradise. Not only are these lakes two of our largest reservoirs, but they also hold some of the largest crappie in the state.

Are you looking for a 2-pound papermouth? This is where you're likely to find one.

These two lakes are separate and have distinct differences, but we've included them here as one single entry -- for several reasons. They are located adjacently, are connected by a canal and both have similar crappie fisheries.

The KDFWR rates the crappie fisheries for both lakes as "good." There are numbers of fish over the 10-inch minimum-size limit. Anglers will regularly catch plenty of slab-sized papermouths, and some will approach or even exceed 16 inches.

The fisheries are made up of both white and black crappie. In recent years, due to an increase in the number of black crappie found in these lakes, anglers have been learning to fish differently for the two species.

Since the population dynamics have changed, methods used in the past to take fish from a population dominated mostly by white crappie have not been as effective.

Anglers have learned that black crappie prefer much clearer water than do white crappie. The black variety also does not seem to depend on woody structure as much as white crappie and will often be found on ledges, points and rocky banks.

Many anglers have also reported that in spring, the black crappie move shallower much sooner quicker than do the whites.

Both species of crappie will move up into the brush at certain times. Anglers who frequent the lake refer to this brush by various names including "buck brush," "buttonball brush" and others. No matter what you call it, it's a crappie magnet. There's also plenty of other natural structure such as lay-downs and artificially placed structure like stakebeds, Christmas trees, brushpiles and PVC attractors.