This is response from Travis Tuten - Biologist for FWC - Newman area.
Another reason to try this lake one more time.........
As far as Newnans Lake goes, it doesn’t surprise me that there wasn’t a whole lot of crappie weighed in. In Fall 2013, we saw a good number of big fish out there and there was a lot of angler effort. However, we didn’t see a whole bunch of fish between 8” and 11”. In Fall 2014, we hardly saw any crappie over 8”.
What we have seen out there was a really big year class coming in 2013 (there were a lot of fish hatched that year). Those fish are just now approaching harvestable size (8 – 9”). I expect the catch at Newnans Lake to pick up more next year with the support of those 2013 fish and will probably be even better the following year.

Travis