"It's a good time to be fishing Pickwick," Pugh said of April. "The lake has experienced tremendous catches of crappie the last two years, and we see no reason that won't continue this year."

Some crappie fishermen start as early as January on the lake and find the fish in 12 to 25 feet of water. They move progressively shallower until the fishing reaches its peak in mid-to-late April.

While a lot of fishing is done by means of pulling, Pugh said, anglers also do well by casting small jigs under a slip-cork, with rocky points, ditches, creek channels and steep banks all being good places for trying that tactic. "The numbers are always there as far as the crappie population in Pickwick," he asserted. "The catch rate is really good. We did some angler surveys there last spring and the catch rate was something like 1.5 fish per hour, which is very good."

The creel limit at Pickwick -- and at Aliceville, too, for that matter -- is 30 crappie per day. All crappie have to be 9 inches or longer. Those are the same limits and size restriction as Alabama, which shares both impoundments with Mississippi.

At Pickwick, you have to stay in the Magnolia State portion of the lake to be legal with a Mississippi license. At Aliceville, a Mississippi license is valid anywhere on the lake.

Pugh said that anglers can investigate submerged brushtops and "crappie mats" -- beds of vertical structure placed in the water by crappie anglers -- when on the lookout for good places to fish. People who place these tops and mats keep the locations top-secret, but it is possible to find the structure with a depthfinder or fishfinder. "Crappie are real attuned to structure," he observed, "so finding brush tops and mats or placing them there yourself is important."

Three good places to try at Pickwick are Yellow, Indian and Bear creeks. "For some reason, these creeks turn on at different times every spring, but it always goes in the same order," Pugh said. "Yellow Creek is the first place that will really get a lot of crappie fishing. It's the early fishing spot for February and early March. Then Indian Creek will become the place to fish for a month or so -- and then they will move to Bear Creek. You can just watch it as it progresses each spring."

About 85 percent of Pickwick Lake is in Alabama, so Mississippi anglers are only fishing a small portion of the waterway. Additionally, roughly 85 percent of Bear Creek is in Alabama.