Thomas said that the Cape Fear River is much like the Neuse. "The Tar River is probably a little better; many folks will fish down in the Tar River drainage because we don't have a size limit. But there is still not much (fishing) effort on the rivers, with the exception maybe of the Tar."

MOUNTAIN RESERVOIRS
Biologist David Yow of Asheville specializes in reservoir fisheries in the western third of the state. He understands that "crappie are mainly a Piedmont fishery" because in the mountains "they're not a primary sport fish."

But there are still some decent fisheries for anglers who don't primarily rely on the tasty walleye for the majority of their table fare.

Yow likes the fishery at Fontana and Santeetlah reservoirs in the extreme western corner of the state, plus W. Kerr Scott Reservoir in Wilkes County and Lake James on the upper end of the Catawba River chain, and maybe Chatuge Lake along the Georgia-North Carolina border.

"Fontana is a pretty consistent producer," Yow said. "It's so big that it doesn't suffer from the vagaries or year-to-year things that affect some of our smaller hydropower lakes."

Besides Lake Wylie, James is probably the top crappie fishery on the Catawba, Yow said. "It seems like crappie fishing has sort of retreated up the Catawba chain over the past few years. We're seeing some declines in Lake Hickory -- and we're not sure why. We've implemented a 20-fish limit, and if there's a problem of reproduction, that should spread the catch out better."

Santeetlah is a fairly productive reservoir (in mountain terms) in Graham County. It has a great deal of excellent wooden cover in shallow water.

W. Kerr Scott in Wilkes County has a reputation for producing big crappie -- jumbo crappie -- but not particularly good numbers. Ditto Chatuge in the Hayesville area.

"We've never been able to figure out Kerr Scott; it has blueback herring for the forage base, and there is limited open-water competition," Yow said. "Chatuge is similar to Kerr Scott. It's less of a river lake -- more similar to something like Jordan in that it has much more structure. In the '90s, we had some high winds that put a lot of structure down in the lake, and now, it seems to be running its course. We've made some improvements in the habitat the last year or so, and it may have some effect."

Hiwassee Lake is the Jordan Lake of the western mountains -- in terms of past successes and future question marks, Yow said.

Big populations of crappie disappeared from the lake around 2000. Biologists like Yow fear that the introduction of blueback herring may be having a negative effect on crappie by taking over from threadfin shad as the primary forage.

"As far as crappie fishing in Hiwassee the last couple of years, in a word, it's been 'crappy,' " Yow said. "But now it looks like it might be starting to rebound. Two years ago, we had a good year-class coming along. We were doing some trap-netting with small mesh nets looking for walleyes, and we had quite a few young-of-the-year crappie in the net. I expect a couple of years down the road that we'll have a good year-class show up."