Oddly enough .... the lake we had our Spring Fling Crappie Camp on, had stable water levels & water temps in the high 60's to low 70's .... and pulling cranks netted the bigger fish & greater numbers of fish ... running ~15ft deep over 30fow. Now, there were quite a few that pushed jigs in shallower water, up in the river end of the lake, that also did quite well in size & numbers.

So, had we all gone by the conditions being "prime" for shallow water spawning and let that dictate our fishing methods ... we wouldn't have had near as many fish brought in.

I'm not set up to push/pull cranks ... but, I did push jigs @ ~15ft deep for a few hours on the day after the event, and caught 7 nice Crappie before the wind made it impossible to fish.

Why the females were out in such deep water, with the conditions being what they were ... But, they were there, and they showed up as little groups on the depth finder. One other little thing that also seemed a little odd, was that most bites came when running in one direction ... even though I went thru the same area in both directions, over and over. Having heard that in the seminar at the event, the day before, I had to try it out ... and sure enough, it happened.