Fishing 5-4-12

Made it out fishing today down at my favorite lake. This is the first time I had the boat out on the lake. I had to get it registered on the lake, and get the stickers put on it.
It started out slow for Crappies and could only catch LM Bass, and a few Yellow Perch. The water temps were 74 over most of the lake. I headed back to one of the coves where I usually catch the spawning fish. There were still some on the beds and turned out to be Black Males guarding the nests. We came across one bed out a little further from the bank in about 8ft of water. The bed was bigger than the front of my boat. There was 3 big Crappie guarding it and they was roughly 3 lbs each. I threw jigs and minnows and each time one and sometimes 2 of them would rush over to check out my offering but wouldn't commit to picking up my offering. I tried for 45 minutes and then finally moved on. On this lake the Blacks spawn first and then the Whites move in after the black have vaccatted the nests. The couple white females that we caught proved this to be true, as they was full of eggs yet. The males were still wearing their tux's yet.
We brought a limit of 15 Crappie and 1 big Bluegill home for about 4 hours work. We caught the Crappie in about 45 minutes after we figured them out and where they was located. Most came on a minnow under a bobber set about 2-1/2 ft. They was holding pretty tight to the boat stations.
This wasn't too bad since the Warden told me when we put in that no one was catching anything today. We got on the water about 2:00 PM.
My wife had a great time today and even managed to catch a few. EB

Sounds about right, black crappies were doing the same out at Walnut Creek today.

I know that black crappies spawn before white crappies. If the black crappie males are guarding the nests right now, does that mean the females have already laid their eggs? Or would they still be waiting in the deeper waters getting ready to lay the eggs?

I would say the black females had laid their eggs and are back in deeper water. The Whites that we caught were out staged and waiting to come in. The egg sacks weren't as firm as they should have been, but with the water temps at 74 degrees it is not wander that they are getting to where they will absorb them back into their system. We didn't catch any really big ones and that make me feel the bigger ones had spawned earlier in March when we had the 90 degree weather and these are the tail end of the spawners. EB