WAPPAPELLO — The crappie spawn this spring at Wappapello Lake appears to be somewhat smaller than a year ago, but the sheer number of young fish produced last year means there’s no shortage of crappies for anglers to catch.
“We were definitely not even close to the amount of production, as far as crappie, as we had last year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing because there’s plenty of crappie in that lake,” said Missouri Department of Conservation Fisheries Management Biologist Dave Knuth, who conducted his annual trapnetting survey on Wappapello last week, setting out 20 nets in various locations along the shoreline.
The survey, Knuth said, was cut short by incoming rain mid-week, but he still was able to gather enough data.
“I pulled our nets Wednesday because the lake was forecast to come up, so we didn’t get as many nights as we wanted,” Knuth said. “We still caught 1,400 crappie, which was a pretty good sample for two days.”
The water temperature during the survey, Knuth said, was in the low to mid 50s, which is a little lower than normal.
“Normally, it’s in the 60s, and we actually do better when the water is cooler,” Knuth said.
While last year’s hatch made up the majority of crappie sampled this year, the lake still has a lot of quality fish in it, according to Knuth.
“We had relatively the same number of quality size fish per net as we did last year,” he said.
Besides the large number of white crappie hatched in 2019, another positive is the black crappie spawn this spring appears to be considerably lower than it has been in several years.
That, Knuth said, is good for the faster growing white crappies.
Growth, Knuth said, is a critical factor in Wappapello’s crappies and hinges mainly on the shad spawn, and this year’s looks to be better than average.
“Our average young-of-the-year shad size was 3.5 inches,” Knuth said. “That’s better than a lot of years, when those shad are around 4 inches and nothing smaller than 9 inches can eat them.”
In fact, Knuth saw lots of the smaller fish with shad in their bellies this year, which makes him optimistic for the future.
“A good thing I saw, which I don’t normally see, is the 8-inch fish and even some of the 7-inch fish, they were full of shad,” Knuth said. “Sometimes in the past, only 10-inch fish had shad in their bellies, so I was pleased to see that.
“Once I run the numbers and look at the condition of those smaller fish this year compared to last year, I bet it’s going to be better.”
Considering there’s “still some small shad in there, we may pick up an increase in crappie growth next year too,” Knuth said.
“In one to three years, we could have a pretty good fishery,” he said. “I’m hopeful, but it really depends on how last year’s big year class is going to grow. The fact those smaller fish were feeding heavily on shad is good news. That means at least the groceries are there for them.”
Knuth also relayed the results of his spring largemouth bass survey on Wappapello, which he did in mid-April.
“Our bass numbers were good again this year,” he reported. “We had about 26% of fish over 15 inches, which is fantastic, and almost 10% were over 18 inches.”
Those results, he said, means there are “a lot of 3- or 4-pound fish in there.”