Crappie on the niangua arm

I picked up a customer off his dock with the goal of learning electronics and Livescope.  He lives in the lower niangua arm. I thought it was going to be a bass trip so I had scouted up some schools and techniques for bass only to find out it was a crappie trip when I picked him up! Luckily we recovered and had a good trip. The electronics helped us, and that is what he wanted to see anyway.

It was sunny, light and variable wind out of the north (ish). Many of the schools we located were not hungry. We would catch one out of the group or so and eventually move on. We found several schools tight under docks suspended down 10 feet or so. The deeper docks were best but we did find some docks in less that 10 feet of water that probably would have bit if it wasn’t so sunny and calm (or waited until late afternoon). Our best school was a deeper brushpile in 20 plus feet of water. The fish were more comfortable there even though the warm temperatures were not effecting those deep fish. Several large female white crappie just hanging low just above the deep brush. We got close to our limit but fell just shy. The dock fish were difficult and took up too much of our time. The brushpile fish were much more cooperative. 90 percent of the fish were white crappie.  Not nearly as many black crappie in this part of the lake. The toll bridge to the dam and gravois arm has spoiled me lately with all the big black crappie down there. Water level is 656.5 so it’s fallen but could be worse. I expect it to fall more in the next couple weeks. Water temp has warmed up some. Not sure if that will be a trend or if it is just a tease. Water clarity is not as clear. Some rain, windy conditions lately and the lake level falling all add to more particals in the water. We did not see any dying shad. That is good news as the last few times in that area dying shad were around.