ENJOYING THE OUTDOORS: CRAPPIETHON SHOWS ANGLERS GOOD ENOUGH TO HAVE IMPACT

If crappie weren't already popular enough among anglers, little orange tags make them as good as gold.

March 18 marked the opening of the 1995 Johnson Reels Crappiethon on Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, the largest of 26 national promotions in which crappie are linked with rich prizes for participating fishermen. The competition, which runs through May 16, offers more than $155,000 in cash and prizes for the catching of 1,592 specially tagged crappie.

Any fisherman is always pleased to land a nice crappie. When he stands a chance of hooking a fat payoff with the same fish, it doesn't hurt his enthusiasm. And there are major fiscal byproducts to generate interest. While the bulk of catches will bring checks ranging from $25 to $100, they range upward from there, with the one crappie dubbed "Tangle Free Tom" worth up to a cool $50,000.

In a past Kentucky-Barley Crappiethon, a Benton woman fishing from the bank caught a fish with a "big dollar" tag. When she was notified by phone of the fish's tag identity, she fainted on the spot: It was that year's Tangle Free Tom and she'd just won $50,000.

With that kind of currency at stake, there's plenty incentive for fishermen to take part (by purchasing a Crappiethon ticket) and certainly to take the tagged crappie they catch to participating sponsors to identify the numbered tag and sort out what good fortune has been struck.

That participation has yielded some revealing observations about crappie and anglers, according to Crappiethon Director Darrell Vanvactor. "Crappie fishermen are very efficient," Vanvactor said, citing statistics of fish tagged and prize fish registered.

"Last year, on Kentucky-Barley, 28 percent of our tagged fish were caught by participants and checked in during the 60-day time limit on the program," Vanvactor said. "Fishermen did well early, but then we had very high water on the lakes and they lost track of the fish during the spawn. Otherwise, they'd have caught more of them than they did."

The national average for prizes claimed in relation to tagged fish available is approximately 20 percent, he said.

The highest percentage we've had was in the Rocky Point, Ind., area of the Ohio River," Vanvactor said. "We has 835 tagged fish there, and those fish apparently stayed in three tributary creeks where they were tagged. We had 505 of them caught by participants."

The opposite is seen on Florida's Lake Okeechobee, a massive, vegetation-filled natural lake. There, because so much acreage is crappie habitat and there are almost no features to concentrate fish and anglers, an earlier tagged program produced only 8 percent of the prize fish caught. The derby there since has been changed to one in which prizes are awarded on the basis of catching fish of a minimal size.

"We've got to have winners," Vanvactor said. "We want to get fish caught."

In most instances, however, a significant number of tagged fish do get caught, leading to the observation that crappie anglers can have a significant effect on the resource.

"People used to think that a lot of crappie died of old age, that fishing pressure didn't have that much effect on them," Vanvactor said. "I don't believe that now. I believe more of them get caught."

Vanvactor said the downturn in the Kentucky-Barley crappie population that followed drought years and poor spawns of the late 1980's has been overcome -- but a few years of poorer fishing brought a blessing to the realization that crappie stocks need more protection.

"After it got tough, we got the 10-inch size limit and the smaller 30-fish daily creel limit," he said. "Those are the best things we've ever done for these lakes.

"Crappie are just as manageable as cattle, but it took those slow years for us to see it. We had to learn to leave the resource going from year to year," said Vanvactor, who lobbied hard for the tighter restrictions before they were implemented.

While Kentucky-Barley waters can't be plucked for as many fish as they once could, and while crappie shorter than 10 inches can't be kept, those very restrictions have led to a major resurgence in the fishery, Vanvactor said.

"The crappie population is good now," he said. "I may have seen years when there were bigger numbers, but the numbers are up and I've never seen a time when the quality of the fish was what it is right now. There are lots of mature fish and they are as fat as they can be.

"Last Monday, another fellow and I fished some here and our best 10 crappie weighed 17 1/2 pounds," Vanvactor said. "That's tremendous to have fish that will average like that."

A fish that is part of the Crappiethon program can be identified by a thin, orange tag -- a plastic "spaghetti-type" tag -- that is attached on the back of the fish just behind its upper, dorsal fin. It must be a 1995 tag to qualify for a prize in the current program.

For an angler to qualify, he or she must have a Crappiethon ticket purchased before fishing. Tickets sell for $3, or $10 for a family tag. Tags and full information are available at participating sponsors displaying Crappiethon banners -- the same merchants that check in tagged fish.

~Steve Vantreese is outdoors editor for The Paducah Sun.