I grew up fishing a lot of the oxbow lakes along the White River. The crappie fishing has been aweful the last couple of years. The shad population has crashed and I believe it is due to the large population of grass crap that have taken over in the river. The grass crap consume the planton therefore the bait fish do not have a food source. In May, there use to be incredible populations of shad in the river system and now there are few shad balls encountered.
If I want to go fishing in an oxbow lake now I drive to Lake Washington in MS.