Crappie5

I know Kings river is trashed for sure.

looks like the crappie will be messed up again for awhile.

Thanks Champ. My son is heading down today so i will have a report from him. If its good then I'm going down tomorrow.

has anyone been up in the Kings river this week? i was there a week and a half ago and the water was real muddy. just wondering what the water color is now.

I agree contact Richard Bowling or Jeff Faulkenberry guide services. They are 2 of the best guides you will ever fish with on Truman Lake. crappie or blue cats are both of their specialties.

laydowns and standing timber in about 25' of water seemed to be the most productive. The whites was about halfway between the mouth and 86 bridge.

we caught a few in 6-8' deep. Most were out deeper

We was down Good Friday and had 10 nice crappie and 13 whites, we went back down Easter Sunday and had our limits of 30 crappie. Pretty tough both days as they were just spotty and we never really found a good pattern. Most of them caught on pearl swimming minnows and live minnows. water color was good yesterday and the surface temps was 49 at 7:00am and we left at 4:00pm and the surface temp was 58. Getting close..................

I made this cleaning station out of a piece of plastic.

Water temp at 6:45am was 48.7 and at 2:00pm it was 52 and it was about 52.7 whem we left.

We was down in the Kings River Sunrise til 4:30 and managed to find 27 crappie, most of them 13"-14" range. 23 of the 27 were males. Some were caught on live minnows but most were on purple swimming minnows and even a couple on a white road runner. we never found a pattern all day. Some were caught right on the bank, and the rest in all kinds of depths of water and different depths down. I'd say the majority came out of 23' of water-8' down.

Are the crappie not on the banks yet? With water temps ive been hearing, i figured the crappie would be already on the banks.

Bill, 2 days prior we were catching them in 23-30' of water about 7-8' down and we started out there yesterday with only a handfull so we went to the banks and there they were. I also agree with them dropping the water may hurt the spawn on some of these fish.

3 of us went down today and had our limits totaling 45 nice crappie in 6 hours. These fish were all on the banks and were really black so they were ready to do their thing. We fished the Cape Fair area for these. Probably 35 of these came out of 2'-3' of water right on the banks. We were using red/white tube jigs on a 1/8 oz jig head and then tipped with a small live minnow.

There are a lot of people that confuse the Serviceberrys with Dogwoods. The Serviceberrys always bloom first and often several weeks before the dogwoods.

Sprint21fter, Im going tomorrow and will be all over from Sweetwater to 86 bridge looking for crappie. I will post the days action with water temps. Friends of mine say its been averaging the 53 degree range.

Martin, I found an article on KY3 about this years lows and an Army Corps of Engineers spoksperson stated that the recod low was 881 in 1965.

Dutch, you are correct it was 2006 that it got to 903. I caught so many big crappie that spring i remember it very well. it keeps dropping it will easily be 903 this spring too. Ive heard from several dock owners that its supposed to hit 900 before too long!

Anyone know why tablerock is not on this site anymore to look up lake levels? I've been looking at this site for years to watch the lake level and now tablerock is gone from it?? http://waterdata.usgs.gov/mo/nwis/current/?type=lake&group_key=basin_cd

Best i recall it dropped to 903. Thats the lowest ive seen it.

Dont know about everyone else, but the current price of fuel is going to cut my trips down a bit this year.

I will say, White River Lodge is the best. Dont let bill get away with the fish cooking totally.......Becky can cook the best trout you ever eat.

We went down yesterday and put in a the Knob and headed up towards twin rivers and Bill B. was right there are millions of whites. We had them blowing up everywhere, I have never seen anything like this. The sad part was we could not hook up with any of them we through everything from spoons, rattle traps, rooster tails, spooks, fins right in the middle of them it was like they were just spunky and just feeling their oats and not chasing anything to eat. I did graph some in 80' of water down about 35'-40' and hooked up with 3 nice ones on a white spoon. Thought we had something going but never caught another one. We gave up on the whites and went after K's and Lm's. We ended up fishing long points, bluff ends and ends of deep docks. We finished the day with no patern at all other than a rattle trap bite. 30 fish, 4 keeps and the biggest was a 16" K caught on lazer eye freestyle jigging spoon. Two other keeper K's were on a rattle trap and one keeper K drop shotting a purple chompers 4" worm. We caught several fish on the bluff ends with a rattle trap. I would say my partner caught well over 15 fish on his chrome/black rattle trap. Fished from daylight and by 12:30 we had enough of the jet skis and big boats. We was fishing on a point just past shell knob bridge and this huge piece of crap of a boat made 8 passes right beside us and would swing around in the cove and come right back by us throwing a huge wake. I thought we were done on the last pass he made as it washed us right up on the bank and the waves were coming over the side of the boat. the location we were at is probably the widest part of the main lake in this area why can't they use it instead of messing with fisherman!! Bill B, thanks for the info got you PM on my blackberry as we were loading up

I'm in if my partner can do it, I will call him tonight. Like Techo...I will donate my entry...........

Bill, good to finally hear a report from you and really good to hear the top water bite report. Thanks for the detailed information as always. Heard anything from SKMO he is usually tearing them up on the top right now.