The surface of Jordan Lake was surreal one recent Thursday as Brian McRae eased his white skiff out of the Poe's Ridge boating access area. It was surreal because the surface was a good five feet lower than normal and because not a ripple -- even from shad flipping -- disturbed its mirror smoothness.

"I've never seen it this calm," McRae's fellow biologist, Corey Oakley, said.

That's saying something because the two young men know the lake about as well as anyone and spend a good part of their time on the water fishing for crappie. But they don't use long, limber crappie rods, jigs, bobbers or minnows. They're biologists for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, charged with keeping Jordan one of the top crappie fisheries in the state.

During the fall and winter months, McRae, 29, of Hillsborough, and Oakley, 26, of Mebane, set trap nets around Jordan to sample the crappie population. The fish are weighed and measured, and some are "sacrificed," as McRae puts it, for the good of the population. In accordance with various size categories, the biologists remove the sacrificed fishes' sagittal otoliths -- ear bones -- which later are viewed under a microscope to determine the age of the fish, much like rings on a tree stump.

The first stop on this morning was across from Poplar Point State Recreation Area. The net was staked to the bank and consisted of three feet of mesh, ring hoops, then two 6-foot-by-3-foot mesh boxes serving as a funnel to the trap basket.

McRae maneuvered the boat as Oakley hauled the net to the boat, dumping a writhing pile of biomass on the casting deck of the skiff. The pair grinned as they sifted through the fish, commenting on some crappie pushing 14 inches, a trophy for any "slab" angler.

"First, we have to get rid of what we don't want," said McRae as he picked through the various species, tossing carp, catfish, sunfish and one nice largemouth bass back into the lake. The remaining crappie went into an oxygenated tub.

The next set was near New Hope Overlook.

"This survey, we seem to be catching bigger fish," McRae said he steered the boat on the balmy November day. "About 10 percent of the fish we're catching are over 10 inches."

That's encouraging because biologists started noticing a trend during 2003 that their catch rates declined. Even more distressing was that more that 80 percent of the crappie they sampled were in the age 2 category and only 8 percent were age 3 or older.

In 2004, a 10-inch length minimum and a 20-fish creel limit were instituted on the lake to give the younger fish a chance to spawn before ending up in an angler's fryer.

"Essentially, one age class was supporting the fishery, and they were harvestable, sizewise," said McRae. "In 2004, things were looking good. Thirty percent were 3 years old, which sounds good, but they were from the previous year. Sixty percent were age 1, meaning a good spawn. From that spawn, we hope to protect a good amount of those fish with the length limit. I think the local anglers like the 10-inch rule more so than the travelers."

McRae said that crappie reach sexual maturity between 2 and 3 years old or at about 9 to 10 inches in length. A female can produce 10,000 to 200,000 eggs per spawn.

The second net yielded 35 or so crappie, and the biologists motored on to a third position in the "S" turns near mile marker 3. All of the nets were set from the bank into six to 18 feet of water.

White crappie prefer the more riverine environment, and black crappie prefer the open reservoir, McRae said. Whites tend to be longer, blacks stockier. To identify them, McRae said that black crappie have seven to eight dorsal spines, and white crappie have five to six. Few anglers make a distinction, and even the wildlife commission has only one state record listing for "crappie."

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