If Pennsylvania has a reservoir that deserves a description as a crappie factory, Pymatuning would deserve consideration of the honor.

Despite intense angling pressure directed at this popular panfish the big lake continues to provide excellent crappie fishing, in terms of both numbers and size.

For those in the know, the action gets stated early, as in within a day or two of ice out.

“As soon as the ice goes out crappies will be back in those shallow mud bays, mostly along the northern end of the lake, ones that become filled with lily pads and spatterdock in the summer,” said Darl Black, crappie guide and editor of the Northwest Pennsylvania Fishing Report. “Those bays heat up very quickly.”

Though numerous bays break up the Pymatuning’s northern shoreline, according to Black they provide different levels of attractiveness to crappies.

He said bays that are silted in aren’t as nearly as productive as ones that have retained some deep water, often in the form of a secondary creek channel.

“I don’t know if the crappies stage in the deeper water and move up immediately on the flats” he noted. “I suspect that’s what they do, since guys that target the mud flats at last ice — from the reports I hear — don’t do well. And while those crappies don’t move in until the ice is off, but it doesn’t take long.

Last year the ice went out on the north end of Pymatuning on the third or fourth of April. On the fifth the guys were hitting the crappies like crazy.”

Black said that the crappies don’t hold there long, particularly when the spring is a late one as it was last year, and will be again this year.

An early spring might see two or three weeks of presence on the pad stem-covered mud flats.

But it can be as short as a week when conditions are such as this spring.

“The crappies are in and out,” Black said. “It’s one of those deals that if you wait until you hear about it, chances are good you’ve missed it. And once they’ve left the bays I’ve found them to be difficult to consistently locate until around the end of April or early May, when they begin to stage up for the spawn.”

Pymatuning is divided, in an east to west manner, by the Andover-Espyville causeway, essentially sectioning the 13,000 acre lake into a north and south basin.

Interestingly, Black noted that the shallow mud bays in the southern portion of the lake don’t experience the ice-out crappie bite that the north end does.

However, the shallow southern bays do see an influx of crappies later in the spring during the spawn.

His experience has been that few crappies use the shallow bays areas of the northern end at that time.

Tactics-wise, Black said an angler tends to be competing with a vast number of boats, particularly during the weekends.

He suggested fishing during a weekday if possible.

“The crappies won’t be evenly distributed throughout a bay,” he said. “It’s slow fishing, working small individual areas until you make fish contact. The best technique is simply a small jig – tipped with either a small minnow or maggot – suspended under a float. You’re only fishing water two to three feet deep. The crappies aren’t real aggressive, so you’ll spend a lot of time in one area soaking the jig-and-bait.”

Additional information on Pymatuning crappies can be obtained by visiting the website www.blackwolfecommunications.com.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.