My family and I were fishing at Cowan Lake Saturday. We were mainly in an area about 25 to 30FOW. The crappie were moving around and would make brief visits to our area. Many times I could see 3 or 4 distinct "layers" of fish. I assumed that at least one of these layers might be bait fish. Thinking that crappie normally like to attack from beneath, I assumed that the middle layers might be the bait fish. We were catching crappie as shallow as 2-4ft and as deep as 16-20. I could occasionally see a fish swim up from the bottom to the masses. Water temp was around 65 and very stained.

Is it possible that the crappie were split into distinct layers?
The interesting thing was that the fish caught higher in the water column were often a bit larger than the others.