Photo by Ron Sinfelt

You have to give the little crappie a lot of credit.

He never gets really big, he's not all that pretty to look at, and he doesn't really fight that hard once you get him hooked, but he's still among the most highly sought-after species that swims in North Carolina's inland waterways.

It must have something to do with how well he enters and leaves a frying pan full of hot grease, and how nicely he fits on a dinner plate between a cup of cole slaw and a pile of French fries or hushpuppies.

That's apparently enough to whet the appetite of thousands of fishermen, who take to the state's lakes and rivers -- especially in the spring -- to try and fill their coolers. The opportunities are certainly there, with North Carolina boasting a handful of excellent crappie fisheries in the central part of the state.

Buggs Island Lake, Falls of Neuse Lake, Lake Wylie, High Rock Lake and the big bopper of them all, B. Everett Jordan Lake, make up as good a group of crappie fisheries as you'll find anywhere in the Southeast.

None of them share the same watersheds, and they're all different as far as structure and habitat and cover, so the only thing they really have in common is that they're full of slab crappie -- the Big Five, so to speak.

Jordan has long been considered North Carolina's best all-around crappie fishery. It didn't take long after it was impounded in the early 1980s to begin producing big slabs, and very little has changed. The lake -- on the Haw and New Hope rivers south of Durham -- has everything a crappie needs: fertile waters, plenty of broad creek arms and coves for spawning, plus countless pieces of standing or laydown timber for protection.

The fishing pressure on Jordan is immense, with anglers often coming from more than a hundred miles away to spend a day (or night) on the lake. When fishing on other good crappie lakes is discussed, there's a phrase that's often repeated, and it ends something like this: "But it's nothing like Jordan."

Put quite simply, Jordan is a very productive reservoir. Spawning success there is tremendous, and growth rates are even better. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission instituted a 20-fish daily creel limit and a 10-inch size minimum several years ago to try and protect the fishery from the tremendous pressure it faces, and the fishing hasn't skipped a beat.

Crappie at Jordan reach the 10-inch size minimum in little more than two years, and there are so many nice fish in the population that plenty of them crack the 1-pound barrier shortly after they reach keeper size. A limit of fish that averages over a pound is not uncommon.

"Jordan has always been good -- maybe the best we've got, statewide," said Christian Waters, a biologist with the commission who has overseen reservoir fisheries in the Piedmont for the past several years. "They grow so fast that if you put an 8-inch minimum (size) on 'em, they'd get one good spawn, and then they're harvested. Production is high, and they grow so fast."

Falls of Neuse Lake has probably moved into the No. 2 spot behind Jordan in recent years, which certainly gives fishermen in the Durham area a lot of options. On the surface, Falls appears to be quite different from Jordan -- it is a narrow, winding impoundment dominated by its feeder creeks -- but it produces the same quality slabs that Jordan does on a regular basis.

"Falls is as good as it has ever been," Waters said. "It really seems to stay in good shape, year after year."

It doesn't get quite the fishing pressure that Jordan does, so the commission hasn't felt the need to put in a size minimum or creel limit, and Falls of Neuse remains an extremely productive reservoir, with a strong forage base and plenty of fish that exceed the 1-pound mark.