Looking in all the wrong places ?

I fished my favorite crappie lake yesterday,after spending several hours fishing in deeper water( 15-25' ), I only landed two crappie.By mid afternoon,I kayaked into the shallow stump field (2-8' o/w ). As if a switch turned on,I caught over 60 crappie,all but a few were 12-15".
What has me a bit baffled,the water temp was 75 in the shallows,I would think too warm for spawn,at least much of one.Our spawn should have ended a few weeks ago,am I wrong,shouldn't the crappie be moving toward deeper water,not ganging up in the shallows?They actually act like they are in the prespawn mode,hitting my artificial nearly every cast.

You can tell what mode they're in, by what the eggs look like in the females or if there are any. The males would still be dark if they were spawning or guarding.

Seems like most everywhere is a couple weeks behind, if not more, due to the late snow & heavy rain we went through in March & April. I was at a lake in E. Tenn. at the first of this month and the Crappie females were full of eggs and still out in 20-30ft of water, making their way to the backs of the creeks. Water temps were 64-67deg and the males were nowhere to be found :banghead

Just another atypical start to the year :tongue

... cp :kewl

The weather this year has had things a little messed up for sure. The crappie in my home lake finally spawned in the high 70's for temp. They seem to be getting back to a normal pattern now.