"By late February, crappie start moving up into shallow areas," Hickman said. "By March, they are in full spawn. In the spring, anglers can catch crappie in the shallow parts of the bayou between the lakes and on the other side of Saline Lake at Big Creek. When the fish move shallow to spawn, people catch them around the shorelines."

Southern Atchafalaya Basin
At the southern end of the Atchafalaya Basin, Lake Verret, Lake Palourde and Grassy Lake near Morgan City also hold excellent potential for big crappie. The largest and northernmost of the three connected shallow natural systems -- Lake Verret -- spreads over 14,000 acres. Palourde, which skirts the northeast corner of Morgan City, covers about 11,500 acres, and Grassy Lake's area is about 1,024 acres. Each lake averages about 6 feet deep with long, gently sloping shorelines.

"Lake Verret is really a massive area together with Grassy Lake, Lake Palourde and all the canal systems between them," said Mike Walker, an LDWF district biologist in New Iberia. "They are all connected by big bayous and surrounded by a cypress-tupelo swamp. It's a very shallow system. Some holes in the lakes drop to about 8 feet deep. Some older canals average about 4 to 6 feet deep, and some newer canals drop to about 7 or 8 feet. There are some stumps and blown-down cypress trees and docks around the edges of the lakes, but the middle of the lakes have very little structure."

Known primarily for the quantity of fish caught here, the area can produce lunkers. Lake Verret put two fish in the state record book. In January 1998, Randy Lewis caught a 2.81-pound white crappie in Talbot Canal off Lake Verret. Six years later, on April 29, 2005, Donald W. Gaspard landed a 3.05-pound black crappie out of the same water.

"It's a good numbers area, but it also has a good average size," Walker said. "The Lake Verret area has lower numbers but produces larger fish than the Atchafalaya Basin. It consistently produces good catches of 8- to 13-inch fish with some (measuring) about 15 inches. It produces a lot of fish in the 1- to 1.5-pound range with the majority (being) about 8 inches. The majority of the fish are black crappie. People do catch some white crappie, but not in any great numbers. Usually, the white crappie are bigger than the black crappie."

Northern Atchafalaya Basin
At the northern end of the Atchafalaya Basin, Henderson Lake near Breaux Bridge has produced some good catches, including at least one crappie exceeding 4 pounds. James Long caught the 4.15-pound slab here in April 1991, and Floyd Meche caught a 3.47-pound black crappie in December 2003. Theophile Guillotte II pulled a 2.08-pound white crappie from Henderson Lake in April 2002.

More a flooded backwater of the Atchafalaya River than a lake, the 5,000-acre Henderson system contains many flats loaded with flooded cypress trees, old stumps and logs. Where much of the lake normally holds about 3 to 5 feet of water, some holes in lakes Pelba and Bigeaux drop to more than 15 feet deep. In some places, water plunges to nearly 30 feet deep. Oil companies have built several canals in this area to service wells, and the builders of Interstate 10 dug a deep canal through the swamp in order to bring in massive concrete bridge sections by barge.