I went to Pickwick on Friday. I haven't crappie fished there in a long time, and the only info i had was that it was a high pressure system with blue skies and warm weather. The graph showed the water temp was 60 degrees so I figured the crappie would be moving up shallow on the flats. I started spider rigging on some flats that were off the main channel in a big creek, maybe 1/3 of the way into the creek. The water in the channel was maybe 20 feet deep, and the flats were big and wide on this side of the creek. I started off with 6 poles, using a combination of minnows and various jig colors.

I trolled around in water that ranged from 10 feet to 2 feet, at a speed of 0.3 to 0.5 MPH I trolled the points of the small feeder creeks, across the mouths of those creeks...no crappie. I caught some bluegill, and a bunch of bass, but no crappie. After 30 or 40 minutes I picked up and moved a little deeper into the creek and targeted a similar area. I did this over and over, working my way further into the creek trying to find them. After about 4 hours of catching everything but crappie I was about 2/3's of the way back into the creek and I finally caught a crappie.

I was in 12 FOW in a spot where a shear ledge transitions to a small flat, then tightens back in to form a ledge again. This is the only place I caught crappie all day. They were all caught in 12 to 14 feet, all were caught at a depth of 6 to 8 feet deep, and all hit either a plain minnow, or a combo that consisted of a red jig with a minnow. I caught three fish in 8 hours. Really the first 4 hours had no crappie, then I hit a little streak from 2:50 to 3:20 where I caught 3 crappie, then no more the rest of the day.

There's not a lot of wood or brush in this particular creek...it's pretty wide open.

I kind of consider the day a bit of a success because I found a few...but it certainly feels like i should have caught more than that spider rigging with 6 poles.

How would you start off on a lake that you hadn't fished in a long time? Where would you start under those conditions, 60 degree water, blue skies, not a lot of visible cover?