We floated to a stop near the fourth bridge support from the riprap - gads I love that word. "We'll tie up here," Wally Marshall said.

In my opinion Marshall is the best crappie fisherman in the state, and maybe the nation. He's proven his expertise time and again by winning crappie tournaments, such as first place in the Crappie USA competition Pro Division on Lake Eufala last year. I've depended on him for a decade to help me find fish.

"Tie on one of those gray jigs there and we'll fish against the pilings," he said.

I examined the gray objects within a tightly closed sandwich bag. "This one?"

Marshall stifled a retch. "No, those are the Vienna sausages I lost a couple of months ago. They must have been aging in that drybox for weeks. The gray jigs are in the other bag."

Selecting a jig, I tied my typical knot - granny - to attach the lure. "Exactly why do we use the gray ones?" I asked, thinking he would dazzle me with a deluge of information about Ph, water temperature and how to read solunar tea leaves. "Do the fish hit gray Blakemore Roadrunners because they look like baitfish? Or is it because they prefer gray this time of the year when the water temperature is above 65 degrees, or ..."

"No," Marshall cut me off with a disgusted look - I'm not sure if it was for the questions or the granny knot. "We're using them today because they're the only ones I had."

I decided right then to learn more about crappie and the methods used to catch them during the year, especially in the springtime. I'd been relying on experienced anglers for too long and it was time for me to graduate.

Bruce Hysmith, Texas fisheries biologist, set me straight on several aspects of springtime crappie. "Everything hinges on temperature," he said hurriedly, to get me off the telephone, I think. "Crappie are more sensitive to changes in the thermocline than any other freshwater fish. They become active once the temperature hits the 40s."

Springtime is for novices and experts alike. Inexperienced anglers soon realize that the different phases and stages of crappie fishing, for both the black and white species, are an important consideration to finding the gregarious fish.

Many Texas anglers know potential crappie filets are found in less water than it takes to brush your teeth when the spawn is in full swing, but what about the rest of the time? A little education goes a long way, eliminating the shotgun approach to hit-and-miss jigging until something down below takes your bait.

Ready to begin, class? Remember this if nothing else. Crappie spawn in 1 to 8 feet of water between 55 and 68 degrees - 64-68 is best. This is usually during the middle of April here in the Lone Star State.

The stages are predicable and easy to remember. Pre-spawn is simple. Black crappie are sometimes 25 and 30 feet deep in early spring. "I've found them suspended in water that's only two or three degrees warmer than the layer below," Marshall said. "Crappie believe in their comfort, and if you can find an overriding warm layer they won't even need physical structure to hold.

"In later weeks I'll look for shallow water in the lake that gets a lot of sun. They'll be stacked up out there like cordwood. Another place they like is the sunny side of concrete bridge pilings, or against rocky shores which warm quickly during the day."

The fish move vertically as the lake water warms, rising from one level to the next and suspending over channel drop-offs alongside submerged structure. When the mood strikes, they begin to move laterally toward the optimum structure for spawning in shallow water.

Their nomadic progress follows traditional migration routes, but crappie won't cross large, open flats devoid of cover. Crappie follow creek channels and structure leading from deep to shallow water. Successful anglers carefully watch depthfinders; looking for fish suspended at various depths, awaiting the next fishy signal only they know and recognize.

Then the action heats up along with the temperature.

White crappie, on the other hand, can always be found from late February through April in feeder creek channels, holding in 6 to 20 feet of water and merely tolerating water in the mid- to high 40s. But once it warms they bury themselves to their eyeballs in thick growths of willows in the mouths of creeks. Here they stack up and wait for conditions to become agreeable before moving out to the spawning beds on the flats, near deep water.