The Buster Boyd Access Area, located in the lake's midsection, near the Highway 49 bridge, is a popular access point on the North Carolina side of Lake Wylie.

To plan a trip with Jerry's Fishing Guide Service, give Jerry Neely a call at (704) 629-9288. For more information, check out www.carolinafishing.com.

BUGGS ISLAND
Just as Wylie is a perennial slab producer along the South Carolina border, Buggs Island serves up consistently fine fishing for quality crappie along the Virginia border. John H. Kerr Reservoir, as Buggs is officially named, is a big impoundment, spreading over nearly 50,000 acres. The larger portion of the lake lies north of the border, but a reciprocal agreement between the two states allows Tar Heel anglers to fish anywhere on Buggs with one fishing license.

Like Wylie, Buggs is highly productive. The crappie grow large and stay well fed. Crappie populations also replenish themselves well, despite heavy spring fishing and no crappie limit, probably because of the tremendous amount of cover that surrounds the lake and the variety of habitat.

The Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, which shares management responsibilities for Buggs Island with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, listed Buggs as one of the best places in the state to fish for crappie in the most recent version of a listing of rivers and lakes that the department publishes annually.

Roger Jones of Hook, Line and Sinker Guide Service sees very little variance in the quality of the crappie fishing from one season to the next. Whether the water has been high or low -- and no matter how fishing may be for other species -- there are always plenty of big crappie to be found at Buggs Island, he said.

Jones keeps crappie fishing very simple -- typically using one of two basic approaches. Either he will troll slowly, putting out a modest spread and working up and down a creek until he homes in on the fish, or he will fish minnows or jigs under slip-corks, casting them over or around specific pieces of cover.

Late in the winter and into the first part of spring, Jones relies mostly on trolling. Most Buggs Island crappie are in the creek channels early in the year, but they move often, as conditions continually change. The fish move up the creeks and onto the channel slopes with strings of sunny days; they drop deeper in the channels and closer to the main body when fronts cause temperatures to plunge.

In addition to changes in water temperatures, ever-changing water levels cause ongoing movement of crappie at Buggs Island. The lake is used for flood control and power generation, and its level changes often -- and sometimes radically -- based on various factors, including rainfall in the Roanoke River basin, water-level control requirements elsewhere in the watershed and local power-supply needs. Anyone who has ever fished this lake in the spring knows that high water will push the bass and the crappie way up into the bushes. However, fluctuations also affect the positioning of the fish during winter. Even when the crappie are 18 feet deep, they're apt to move a couple of feet up on a structure when the water rises substantially.

Jones pointed toward Butchers, Rudds and Grassy creeks, all of which are in the middle portion of the lake, as three of the best areas for early-season crappie action. These waters have no cool-water influences, he indicated, and their waters warm quickly with the first sunny days of the new year. The crappie generally move up the creeks and onto the flats as spring begins to creep in, but they move back and forth often. Therefore, an angler must go with a searching mentality, Jones said.