Well, I couldn't stand it any longer ......... I had to go fishing, somewhere!! I took a little trip down to a small (784 acre) lake in Central Ky, called Cedar Creek Lake. I fished from the bank - casting out over the stake buckets & weed/moss covered bottom. I caught several Crappie, Bass, a hand sized Shellcracker, and a feisty little Longear Sunfish (what I grew up calling a "redbelly"). Nothing longer than 7" ... but, hey - I was just "fun fishing", so it didn't matter ...LOL!! I did make a startling discovery, though .... Cedar Creek Lake has BLACKNOSE !! I caught two of them little guys. I knew the lake had been stocked with Black Crappie - I just didn't know that any Blacknose were in that stock. Now I'm definitely going to add that lake to my list of Crappie waters. Here's a quick overview of the development of the lake -
http://www.kdfwr.state.ky.us/cedarla...vPath=C101C293 ........ and here's a map detailing the layout -
http://fw.ky.gov/kfwis/viewable/cedarcreeklake.gif
The lake's only a couple of years old, but the 9-10" Crappie are starting to show up in numbers. Shad were supposedly eradicated from the lake, during construction, but were not (or were "planted" by someone with good, but misguided intentions). This will only hurt the Shellcracker & other sunfish, by allowing the other predators (Bass, Channel Cats, Crappie) to feed on Shad - instead of the young sunfish - which will ease predation on the sunfish, and allow them to overpopulate (and not reach their full potential size).
I plan on checking it out, every now & again, just to keep track of the growth of the Crappie & Shellcrackers :D ..... hey, I gotta do my part to keep the population thinned out - so they can reach their full "slab" potential :p ............... cp