Theory

There is no doubt that fish were caught at higher rates last year during the drought but if you go back and look..2010 Butla hit 230 round May 1 and didn't get to 220 until July(Great Spawn) 2011 it almost hit 240(Great Spawn) last year these fish were not keepers and many are not now.. One thing you must remember about the 'Grass' is the fact that no time in last 5 yrs was lake below winter pool all of growing season.. This Grass has grown all the way out to the 208' water line... That makes for a lot more cover at 228 than in years past... There are plenty of fish in that lake

"MDWFP fall 2012 electrofishing found good numbers of white crappie and blue catfish (white river cats), but numbers of largemouth bass, bluegill (bream), and black crappie were very low due to low water. Surprisingly, there was a decent white crappie spawn despite the low water."
............and there should be a good spawn this year. i think the high water and grass are a blessing.

Bird no one on this site will agree with you.because most don't fish Butla .There are not plenty of fish in the lake but it will come back. Good luck

I think the fish are still there!!! Maybe not the over abundance we had last summer, but still there...
With Butla being 9" over summer pool and all the brush, it's like fishing the Amazon "flooded"...
You'll half to put up the spider rig & get your best jig pole out... And it better have some backbone!!!
I had planned to pre-fish this past Friday & if I found some was going fish saturday's tournament.
I took off half a day Thursday & Friday... Plans change..... I think when I get out again it will be " BUTLA "

Get back soon Tush, the crappie miss you!

Hey there Tush. Man, you've had our prayers bud. Get well soon

Water level has a lot to do with it. Like fishing in a bath tub vs fishing in a lake. Also you can't go fishing once a month and expect great numbers with the lake rising got to go every day to stay on top of them. Sure glad Sardis jumped up when it did. They were getting hammered really bad.

The new world record is in that lake

http://www.mdwfp.com/applications/fi...Info.aspx?id=8

The mdwfp seems to agree with the theory of most on this thread. That is, the fish are spread out in THOUSANDS of acres of flooded timber and grass. Also, I don't know how you know how many people on this site actually fish Arkabutla...are you at the ramps doing creel and crappie.com surveys? Additionally, how do you continue to argue against the fall electroshocking numbers?

Some here have posted in the past how crappie were caught at this time last year blah blah blah. This is a different year with some record low temps for spring. Crappie spawn based on water temp..I don't see how one could expect to be catching crappie shallow in the spawn, with record low temps, at the same time as they did last year.

I may not like all the rules the mdwfp puts on lakes but I also don't electroshock and do creel surveys to determine how the crappie population is doing. I have to rely on their sciencetific analysis of the lake, not joe bob ain't catching no fish!!

Even tho we didn't catch numbers yesterday, our best 3 were 2.21, 1.80, and those 2 were weighed in at the tourney. We had an approx. 1.70 (Didn't weigh that one on tourney scales) also. We also had 2 small males that were barely over 12". We found the right pattern too late in the day, or it could have been different. We caught fish from 5 fow to 15 fow. There are some GOOD fish there. My partner OleBlue caught 14-16" fish on Wed. and Thursday, but for some reason, (Butla is Fickle anyway), the bigger fish had changed patterns. I'm looking forward to the next 3-4 years there.

Seems with the high water and cover, The Good LORD, and Mother Nature has it covered!!!!!