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Kansas Fishing Records

Copyright 1999-2001

Submitted by Ned Kehde - February 26, 2001

Larry Blevins' winter crappie quest finally commenced on Feb. 19th and 20th at Clinton Lake. Except for a couple January excursions to the tepid waters of La Cygne Lake, this tempestuous winter kept Blevins cloistered in his Wynadotte County home for more than two mouths. Consequently, his fishing and cabin fevers raged. By late February, he had become so antsy that he was willing to employ some radical methods to find Clinton's crappie, and he knows a lot of tactics.

He has been an avid crappie angler since 1983, and in recent years, he
has fared well in regional crappie tournaments.

Back in the 1980s, Blevins discovered that winter is the most fruitful
season for catching oodles of big crappie from the big reservoirs in
northeastern Kansas. But the past four winters have been frustrating for
crappie anglers hereabouts. The reason for that is that there haven't many
as many as big congregations of crappie scattered around the lakes as there
used to be, and the congregations that do exist quickly become pounded by
anglers.

Blevins said that northeastern Kansas used to be a world-class crappie
fishery. But he suspects that the many floods that hit these parts since
1993 and the exponential increase in the angling pressure - especially
during the winter - have adversely affected the crappie populations.

Since there aren't enough big schools of crappie to share with all the
anglers, the only way an angler can enjoy some bountiful winter fishing is
to be the first angler to locate a big school and keeping its whereabouts a
secret for a few days. And that was Blevins' plan on his Feb. 19th visit to
Clinton.

On this outing, about 40 percent of the lake was covered with ice, and
Blevins searched the lake's ice-free sections for hours but could catch only
11 crappie.

Such a paltry catch isn't unusual when the lake is partially covered with
ice. Anglers postulate that the crappie reside in the lake's ice-covered
sections, preferring the shade the ice provides. In fact, crappie have been
known to move overnight from a lake's open-water portions to the ice-covered
areas, and some anglers contend that the crappie can hear the ice forming.

So after his sorry outing on Feb l9th, Blevins decided to employ his big
Lowe boat on the next day as an ice cutter to reveal a crappie hideaway
under the ice.

On his second outing, the temperature rose from 33 degrees at 9 a.m. to 44
degrees at 3 p.m. A bit of mist and haze cluttered the sky at daybreak, then
it turned sunny for a spell, but by mid-afternoon thick sheets of steel-gray
clouds covered the sky. A wind, angling from the northeast at eight to 11
mph, made it seem chillier than the thermometer indicated.

Blevins launched his boat at 9 a.m. and commenced cutting miles of ice,
which ranged in thickness of a half inch to three inches. By 11 a.m., he
hadn't found a crappie, his boat was stymied by a massive patch of four-inch
ice, and he was disheartened.

So he trailered his boat and drove to Pomona Lake, which had been thawed
for 14 days, but also pummeled by scores of fishermen. Despite that
pummeling, Blevins managed to find one big school of crappie from which he
caught and released 50 of them in about two hours, proving once again that
it is best to fish ice-free waterways.