Finding crappie in almost any fresh water in Mississippi shouldn’t be a problem, but finding papermouths in quantity or in gigantic sizes — that’s more difficult. Still, no matter what the weather does this spring, with a bit of thought and preparation there are places in your part of the state to limit out.

Not only do we have a lot of lakes that hold these tasty fish, there’s even a lake in where a new variety, the Magnolia crappie, can be found. As is the case for me with most other hunting and fishing in Mississippi, the biggest fish are about as far away from my home on the coast as you can get, but even down here, the Pascagoula River basin holds a lot of papermouths.

THE MAGNOLIA CRAPPIE

This is a hatchery concoction that’s just beginning to be stocked in the state. Right now the only fishable population is in Lake Charlie Capps outside of Rosedale. However, as numbers of the fish increase they’ll be stocked in additional waters for which control of crappie numbers is important. Why this is so? Read on.

Magnolia crappie have several unique characteristics, appearance being one. The fish is a cross between a black and a white crappie and so looks like a crazy quilt. According to fisheries biologist Tom Holman, its color pattern is both mottled and banded, with a black strip along the top.

Also noteworthy: It’s a triploid hybrid and unable to produce fertile eggs. “Females are electroshocked up and their eggs are harvested,” Holman explained. “Then the eggs are put in a pressure chamber and it is cranked up several thousand pounds. This treatment makes the fish produced from the eggs sterile.”

Why stock fish that can’t reproduce? It would seem that more crappie would make for happier anglers, which would in turn make the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks look like a bunch heroes. Making anglers happy isn’t the only reason the MDWFP is around, however. The agency also works to maintain a balance of predator and prey fish so that no species goes hungry and the natural balance is maintained.

“In healthy lakes crappie have a tendency to overpopulate,” Holman said. After a few good years of increasing to sizes and weights pleasing to anglers, the crappie begin taking over, and other fish are squeezed out. Although young crappie are still hatched and provide forage for other fish like bass, they begin to take up too much space, pushing other populations of fish out of their normal place in the ecosystem and reducing the numbers of bass, bream and other species that fishermen also love to catch. Plus, the competition for food is so fierce that the crappie become stunted.

These new sterile fish prevent this from happening. The only downside is the hatchery staff must catch egg-filled females, go through the fertilizing and sterilizing process and then grow the fry up to releasable size.

Although Magnolia crappie are sterile, the fish have the same instinct to breed and nest, so the spring fishing over beds is a still a logical way to catch them. They also respond the same way the black and white crappie do to jigs, minnows and trolled baits fished over and in structure.

WHERE TO FISH

Regardless of the species of papermouth you pursue, the eternal question is: Where are the best places? Taking a ride on Interstate 55 through the Magnolia State puts you in easy reach of good crappie fishing from the central to the north part of the state.

Successful crappie fishing in the spring starts at Ross Barnett Reservoir outside of Jackson, usually in early March. A particularly cool spring can set this back a week or two, but crappie start moving as soon as the water warms, according to Tom Holman.

“From Barnett the bite moves north up the I-55 corridor,” he said. “Grenada Lake, then Wolf Lake, Eagle Lake, Enid, Sardis, Okatibbee and Arkabutla. The bite peaks at tax time, around April 15, at Barnett Reservoir.”

This means that a fisherman with time on his hands could spend more than a month fishing for crappie around the state and end up back at his own doorstep. Most of us don’t have that much time, but understanding that circuit allows you to time a few trips to coincide to where the action is.