Ten teams fished last Sunday’s Wappapello Crappie Club tournament under cold, cloudy and windy conditions.
At the end of the day, the team of Manes and Sandage came out on top, taking first place with a stringer weight of 9.25 pounds. They also had the day’s big fish, which weighed 2.02 pounds. For their efforts, the pair won $680.
Second place went to Guiling and Conner with 8.84 pounds, which earned them $320.
The club’s next event will be held Jan. 25.
Crappie fishing at Wappapello Lake has been decent, according to what I’ve heard, but there just haven’t been a whole lot of people giving it a go.
With the cold water at Wappapello, an angler’s best bet right now would be to fish around deep structure along the river channel. If we get a few warm, sunny days in a row, crappies could follow the shad into the shallows, which warm up quicker, in the afternoons.
Duck numbers didn’t grow much with the latest cold front, and hunter success remains about the same on the region’s managed wetlands.
The only real bright spots are Pool 8 at Duck Creek, which at last check was seeing a 2.0 bird-per-hunter daily average, and Ten Mile Pond in Mississippi County, where hunters are enjoying a 3.5 bph average.
At the Otter Slough Conservation Area, this week’s survey showed 41,000 ducks, which is pretty much the same as it has been. On Tuesday, the bird-per-hunter average was 1.4, and it’s ranged from 0.7 to 3.31 in the last week.
Outside of Pool 8 at the Duck Creek Conservation Area, the bird-per-hunter average has ranged from 1.2 to 1.8 in the last week, and this week’s survey showed 9,500 ducks, a small increase from a week ago.
Bowhunters in Missouri are still going after deer, and the record harvest creeps upward every day.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the statewide harvest was up to 57,028.
At this point in the season, success is driven by weather conditions, the ability to set up on good food sources and hunter effort. Across the state, most days see hunters taking between 100 and 165 deer daily.
Locally, bowhunters in Butler County have taken 535 deer, and in Stoddard County, they’ve killed 669.
In Ripley County, 559 deer have been tagged by bowhunters, and in Carter County, the total is 562.
Dunklin County’s archery deer harvest has been sitting at 113 for several days, while Wayne County leads the area with 961 deer arrowed.
The season remains open through Jan. 15, and if the duck hunting doesn’t improve, some hunters may be heading back out with their bow instead of a shotgun.