Thread: Wappapello

Welcome to the board, Dave. I've never fished Wapp, but I'm happy to see people like you taking time out to answer questions. Thanks!

Well I am glad to be aboard! I thought I would let everyone know I was on the lake all of last week trap netting and thought I would share some preliminary findings. Our overall catch rates were down from last year, but I don't think it is because the crappie are not there. We had water temperatures around 63 degrees and not very stable weather conditions. We were battling high winds and fronts pushing through almost every other day. We trapnetted the upper end of the lake from about Sulphur Springs down to Chaonia the first two days and our catch rates were not great. This was probably due to extremely high visibility (5 ft) this year and we probably had a significant amount of net avoidance. Our catch rates on the lower end of the lake were better and picked up as the week went on. Most of the fish we caught were caught in 5-8 feet of water that was in close proximity to the old St. Francis River channel or other creek channels. The Lost Creek area close to the main lake were some of our better nets. The fish were also not feeding with most of their stomachs being empty, which may have been due to the unstable weather conditions. We also saw very few anglers, which is never a good sign they are bitting. My helper and I gave angling a try after work one night and ended up with one 10 inch crappie. Although our numbers were down the quality size fish were still there. We caught a good number of 10-13 inch crappie. The largest was 14.1 inches. I would also like to mention there is also a good year class of 8-8.9 inch white crappie pushing through that should all be over the 9 inch limit next year. I wish I could say being a fisheries biologist makes me a better angler, but it doesn't. So as far as helping you catch fish I am limited with what help I can give.
Happy Fishing,
Dave Knuth