I live near a small (260 acre) city lake. I've caught a lot of crappie there in the spring, when they are spawning but almost never during the non-spawning periods. The lake is muddy, I mean chocolate milk muddy 90% of the time. There's virtually no cover in the deeper parts of the lake, no brush, standing timber or rocks. There are some shallow creek channels and bottom contour changes. The lake is full of threadfin shad and I've caught ton's of them for bait. I've caught dozens of small crappie in my cast net (over a period of time) when catching shad. These crappie are all small. One-half of the lake is less than 8 feet deep. The area near the dam reaches 18 feet of water though.

I was reading another thread on Crappie.com and some guys were discussing crappie living near or in school's of shad. So, my long winded question is this. If there is virtually zero cover to attract crappie, should I concentrate on finding the schools of shad and fishing those schools? If so, how would you guys go about fishing this way?

Maybe the crappie are staying in very shallow water due to the muddy nature of this lake?

I've learned a lot from browsing Crappie.com. Thanks for all the info.