Grenada Lake new restrictions! About time!

[Mississippi Slab]

This was taken from the Clarion Ledger newspaper in Jackson, MS:

In a move it says is to maintain one of the country's best trophy crappie fisheries, the state's wildlife commission today approved more restrictive limits on Grenada Lake. The Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks proposed a 12-inch minimum length limit and a 15-crappie daily creel limit on the state's largest reservoir. Current regulations allow a 30-fish daily limit and fishermen can keep all crappie over 10 inches in length. Under state law, the proposed changes would become effective in 60 days. Public comments on the change will be accepted for the first 30 days, on until Feb. 17. North Mississippi fisheries biologist Keith Meals said the changes are based on comments received from 400 Grenada fishermen. "We did a series of on the lake creel surveys during which we asked crappie fishermen if they would support more restrictive limits on Grenada," Meals said. "Of those, 93 percent said they would support tighter restrictions. "Of that group, 30 percent wanted a longer size limit, five percent wanted a lower creel limit and 65 percent wanted both the longer size limit and the lower daily limit."

[DENNIS BOWERS]

Slab, Here we have a 10" Min. and a 15 fish limit. I for one am all for it.

[ShilohRed]

Part of me would like to see that on pickwick. Now its 30 fish .
Sure would make for some great fishing in a year or so. Theres so many people fishing for them now. And that is all year. Used to be only in the spring did A lot of people fish for them.
Pete

[Eager Beaver]

Want to be careful about playing with the length and amounts of Crappie in lakes. If they cut back on the number of Crappie that can be Harvested and raise the lenth limits than you are compounding the bait ratio. It will take a lot more bait and food source to sustain a lot more and larger Crappie in a given Lake. The Fish and Game raised the length limits here in Ne. and screwed everything up. The Idea was to have more fish larger than the 10 inch range. We now have a 10 inch size limit here and there isn't any fish big enough to keep and now have stunted Crappie. You can fish all day and most likely at the end of the day won't have a keeper in the boat. There are so many fish in the lake now, that they are fighting for food. The size of the fish is actually getting small instead of bigger.

[crap-king]

at High Rock we have an 8" limit and a 20 fish creel per person - it has really made a difference as it looks as our fishing are consistantly getting bigger and bigger - most of us only keep 10"plus fish unless they swallow the hook we keep the 8 and 9 inch fish

[chaunc]

Here in n/w Pa., we dont have a size limit and we can keep 50. We also have a lot more people fishing for crappies. More and more people are fishing from the bank and catching a heck of a lot of 8-9" crappie. Some bigger, some smaller. They keep what they catch and it leaves more baitfish for the bigger fish, which i catch, from my boat. The COE puts brush in for the shore guys to fish. I fish deeper drops and catch bigger fish. I've noticed within the last 5 years that the crappie in our lake are a lot thicker. Even the 9" fish have some real nice fillets. If they want to put a size limit on our lake, i think it would hurt it rather than help it. Of course, you guys down south have a longer growing period for your fish than we have up north.

[Mo'nBack]

We don't have size limits on most of our lakes in La and 50 is our limit. Our fish on average are not quite big as those on Grenada (from what I've read), but we do have very good fish and extremely large amounts of shad. It's not all the time a single person can catch their limit and usually 20-30 is a good day, but they're good fish. With the amount of baitfish we have, I think it would hurt us here on most lakes, but might help on a few. It looks like it would have to be on each individual lakes capacity here, which probably won't happen.

[sac-a-lait]

Look, if the MIN length is 12" that should tell you something about what we're doing so far. You boys up north never even seen a 12" fish much less that is you lake MIN. Sounds more like BASS to me. BUt Grenada is what it is. THE BEST CRAPPIE LAKE IN THE WORLD hands down. THere's more shad in than lake than Jesus fed the masses with.

[Eager Beaver]

Look, if the MIN length is 12" that should tell you something about what we're doing so far. You boys up north never even seen a 12" fish much less that is you lake MIN. Sounds more like BASS to me. BUt Grenada is what it is. THE BEST CRAPPIE LAKE IN THE WORLD hands down. THere's more shad in than lake than Jesus fed the masses with.

Funny thing is-That is what our fish and game people said about our lakes, before they ruined them. The private lake that I fish most of the time now has a 10 inch size limit on it and can support that size restriction. I have been told not to throw any big crappie back into the lake, that the lake needs to be fished. I try not to keep anything under 10-1/2 inches. If you think we don't catch 12 in fish you should get out more.

[izzysfishin]

Look, if the MIN length is 12" that should tell you something about what we're doing so far. You boys up north never even seen a 12" fish much less that is you lake MIN. Sounds more like BASS to me. BUt Grenada is what it is. THE BEST CRAPPIE LAKE IN THE WORLD hands down. THere's more shad in than lake than Jesus fed the masses with.

I think you should do some checkin around before makin a comment like that. Just off the top of my head I can think of 7 northern states whose Black Crappie state record is larger than Miss. Shear numbers maybe, but if ya think nobody north of the mason-dixon line ain't seen a 12" crappie, you ain't been gettin out enough...izzy:rolleyes: