Truman Lake’s flooded forest is crappie heaven

Richard Bowling jabbed his long fishing rod through a slight opening in the branches of a flooded tree on Truman Lake, and dropped his minnow into a likely looking spot to find a crappie.

He shook the rod slightly, then let the minnow sit. That caught the attention of a big fish.

The crappie thumped the live bait and pulled hard, straining to get back into the maze of brush and tree limbs in which it was hiding. But it was a lost cause.

Soon, Bowling had the 1 1/2 -pound fish in the boat and was celebrating another good moment on one of the nation’s best crappie-fishing lakes.

“Truman has a lot of crappies that will go a pound or better, especially in the upper end of the Osage and the Grand,” said Bowling, who has guided on Truman for 22 years. “The crappie fishing is probably better now than it ever has been, for both size and numbers.

“Truman has so many baitfish and so much cover that it’s just ideal for crappies.”

Surveys by the Missouri Department of Conservation back Bowling’s assertions. Fall samples at Truman, the 55,600-acre reservoir in west-central Missouri, found impressive numbers of crappies between 7 and 11 inches. Biologists expect the majority of those fish to grow to 9 to 12 inches this year, providing excellent fishing.

The quality also is there. Each year, word spreads about someone catching a 3-pound crappie, a rare fish, at Truman. It has happened already this year. While fish in that size range are uncommon, crappies in the one-pound range aren’t.

Bowling was in the middle of that crappie world when he took a guide party — Larry Chambers of Parkville and I — on a trip Tuesday. He steered his boat through a flooded forest until he found the trees he was looking for, then dropped the trolling motor.

Why here? Because there were a few isolated flooded cedars that had bushy branches and provided thick cover for the crappies.

“The crappies are in their pre-spawn stage right now,” Bowling said. “They’ll hold in the center of a pocket just out from a spawning cove in one of these trees with lots of limbs and wait for the water temperature to get right before they start moving in.

“You can dip these trees and really catch some nice fish.”

Bowling proved as much Tuesday. On a day when howling winds and a cold front made the fishing tough, we put 12 nice-sized crappies in the livewell.

That amounted to an off-day for Bowling, who had been guiding customers to 15-fish limits before the cold front moved in. Still, it showed that even on tough days, Truman will produce.

“The water temperature had been up to 57 degrees during that warm spell, but it has dropped to 51 after those cold nights,” Bowling said. “That will definitely slow the bite.

“But there are still ways to catch ’em.”

Bowling had been spider rigging, slow-trolling with multiple rods out and moving down the center of a cut. That method was working extremely well, with some of his groups limiting out by 9:30 a.m.

With the tougher conditions, Bowling guessed that the crappies would be holding tighter in the thickest trees they could find. That hunch paid off.

Bowling went to “long-poling” — using an 11-foot, light-action rod to reach far back into the brush and timber without crowding the fish. He used bright-green line to see the subtle bites and a heavy sinker to get the minnow down and to keep it from swimming around too much and getting wrapped around the thick limbs.

“You have to get right on top of these trees and drop it straight down,” Bowling said. “A lot of times, they’re in the thickest stuff you can find.”

Unlike some fishermen, he doesn’t simply drop the trolling motor and start fishing every tree he can find. He knows there are sweet spots in that flooded forest.

“I’m looking for something that is different — maybe timber that is on a hump, along a dropoff or an isolated tree,” he said. “They’ll stay in those spots in 10 to 15 feet of water until the water temperatures start pushing toward the 60s. That usually takes some warm nights.

“They might be out in those pre-spawn areas one day, then in on the banks the next.”

When the crappies are in the shallows spawning, Bowling often uses a minnow or jig under a bobber to entice the fish.

The spring crappie fishing at Truman is widely anticipated, drawing hundreds of fishermen, some of whom get out only one time of the year. But the crappies will bite year-round.

Bowling tells stories about catching limits of big crappies in the heat of summer. And the winter fishing can be just as hot.

“When I moved here, I was mostly a bass fisherman, and Truman had great bass fishing,” said Bowling, 47. “But as the bass fishing went down, I turned to crappies and I just loved it.

“I’ve fished Truman for 25 years now, and I can’t remember many years when the crappie fishing wasn’t good.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Truman Lake’s flooded forest is crappie heaven."