Photo by Ron Sinfelt

For South Carolina crappie fishermen, there's plenty of good news for the 2006 crappie season. Traditionally, anglers think of the spawning season as prime crappie fishing time, and while that's correct, you don't need to limit your fishing to that shallow-water spawning period. Fishing in all of the lakes we'll highlight here is typically good throughout most of the year.

Even now, during the pre-spawn time period, you can expect to make good catches of crappie. Moreover, that action continues right through the spawn and into the post-spawn phases.

According to Val Nash, chief of Freshwater Fisheries for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR), while all lakes have strong and weak phases of reproduction success, the crappie fishing remains very good statewide.

Nash noted that lakes Hartwell, Wylie and Wateree should all have a good year in 2006.

"A good crappie fisherman shouldn't have any trouble on any of our South Carolina lakes, as there are plenty of crappie to fish for," he said.

In addition, he added, there is at least one lake that will offer anglers excellent crappie-fishing opportunities for the next few years. That lake, of course, is Lake Murray.

"Excellent conditions for crappie and bream populations are in place at Lake Murray," Nash said. "With the long-term drawdown for repair work, the exposed areas around the lake grew up with vegetation. Therefore, when the water returned to normal pool, all of a sudden, there was a tremendous increase in several factors that influence panfish populations. First, of course, is much more water. And this water now encompasses a great deal of natural vegetation that had grown up around the shoreline."

When the water flooded back over these areas, it had almost the same effect as filling a new lake. Not quite that good, perhaps, Nash said, but close enough to make a big difference. This creates a boom situation.

"The carrying capacity of the lake skyrockets. There's a great deal more opportunity for spawning. There's much more food available now. The lake has more nutrients in the water simply from aquatic vegetation decaying. For young crappie growing quickly, there is also a boom in the population of the small threadfin shad and an exploding mayfly population, both critical to young fish at certain points of their growth. All these factors combine to create a boom population of fish," Nash said.

The really good news is that this boom should last for a period of more than one or two years. Gradually, the fishing will level off, but there are real opportunities for anglers for the next few years at this lake.

"Even though during the drawdown, the population had declined simply because the available water was greatly reduced, I know fishermen who continued to make excellent catches of crappie while the water was low. Simply, the carrying capacity of the lake was reduced because of reduced water. However, the overall population of crappie was still in good shape. Therefore, the lake had a good population of crappie but at a reduced carrying capacity. Now that the water is up, spawning success and a rapidly expanding crappie population is to be expected," Nash said.

During the cooler weather in the pre-spawn time frame and again in the post-spawn, most of the fish will likely be holding in slightly deeper water adjacent to drops, ledges and points.

However, when the fish move to the shallows to spawn, there's literally more shallow-water cover than you can fish. You may have to work some great-looking areas for a while to find places where fish seem to be concentrated. When you find such an area, work it over and over.