Sorry brownie for not seeing your post earlier. Yes, the east and west arms of the lake are closed for waterfowl hunting until January 31. you have to stay in the center arm, but both the East boat ramp and Strawkas Point ramps are open. My son and I went out Friday and I have to say we had a blast! We actually went to shake out a couple of things on the boat. Just for kicks, we threw a couple of rods in the boat. We have a 70hp motor, and we checked, you can use the big motor to load and unload the boat, but we had to use the trolling motor for everything else. We pull into the ramp and there are 20-25 trucks in the lot. What? On a Friday? In the middle of January? Then, we pull down to put the boat in and see there are 10-15 boats scattered within 500 feet of the ramp. Well, they must be catching something and they aren't far away, which is key, when all you have is a trolling motor. So, we join the crowd and immediately start catching crappie. After catching a dozen, all of which are 1/2"under the size limit, we decide to break from the crowd and start experimenting. We head back towards the ramp, and bam, we both get a hit. We both pull in 11" crappies. We float back over the spot, and again, a keeper in the boat. All of this within 70-80 feet of the boat ramp. We fish this spot for about another hour as its getting dark now and end up with 10 keepers. Not bad for a day of boat checkout!