Took Out A Few Crappie Munchers This Morning

[Jerry Blake]

I took a family fishing this morning that wanted to catch a mess of stripers. I don't guide for them very often because their preferred bait - live shad - can be hard to come by and I'm usually busy with crappie trips. But I don't mind thinning them out once in a while.

They didn't act like they wanted to get serious early. We missed several light biters and only landed two in the first hour and a half of fishing. But about 8:30 we found a school that was feeding and caught the rest of our limit in about 45-minutes.

As long as stripers have plenty of shad to eat and crappie have plenty of cover to hide in, I don't think stripers really do very much damage to the crappie population but here's 15 that won't be eatin' any more crappie for sure!

I'll find out in the morning how appreciative the crappie are.

[GCD]

Examine the stomach contents of those Stripers and see how many Crappie you find, I'll bet 10:1 that you don't find any!

The main predator for Crappie is Crappie Guides!

[Buckeyemusky]

Examine the stomach contents of those Stripers and see how many Crappie you find, I'll bet 10:1 that you don't find any!

The main predator for Crappie is Crappie Guides!

Nuff said

[PBUG2009]

gcd i like that

[Jerry Blake]

I'm a Crappie Fishing Guide and I probably haven't caught more than 50 crappie all year! I have probably cleaned about 4,000 crappie so far this year though that were legally caught by licensed anglers. That's about 1% of the potential reproduction of one female crappie in one spawning season.

Adequate habitat is the key to a healthy crappie population. Working with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, other fishing guides and volunteers, I have placed well over 700 Bamboo Crappie Condos in Lake Greeeson in the last three and a half years.

Nuff said?

[GCD]

I'm a Crappie Fishing Guide and I probably haven't caught more than 50 crappie all year! I have probably cleaned about 4,000 crappie so far this year though that were legally caught by licensed anglers. That's about 1% of the potential reproduction of one female crappie in one spawning season.

Adequate habitat is the key to a healthy crappie population. Working with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, other fishing guides and volunteers, I have placed well over 700 Bamboo Crappie Condos in Lake Greeeson in the last three and a half years.

Nuff said?

C'mon Jerry, you know as well as everyone else that out of a clutch of 30,000 eggs only a half of a dozen are lucky enough to make it to maturity.

You place the Crappie condos for job security and to make your job a whole lot easier.

Nuff said?

[wish4fish]

If his clients have only caught 4,000 out of the 30,000 from one female and only half a dozen make it to maturity then what happened to the others? Stripers? :D

[Shine Runner]

Examine the stomach contents of those Stripers and see how many Crappie you find, I'll bet 10:1 that you don't find any!

The main predator for Crappie is Crappie Guides!

Bull. Since the stocking of stripers instead of hybrids in GA lakes, black crappie numbers have gone down. This has been over 7 years and not a 4 year cycle that most lakes see in black crappie numbers. A lot of striper fishermen here in GA use small crappie for bait. Our crappie were stable even with a large population of flathead catfish and largemouth bass. The hybrids competed only for the shad. Juvenile crappie school together in like sizes and are easy targets for a school of large stripers that do nothing but cruise all day and night looking for food shallow and deep. I wish more guides kept more stripers. 10:1 you haven't split the gut on 10 stripers to know.

Just sayin...........from seeing.

[jaxsprat]

I'm a Crappie Fishing Guide and I probably haven't caught more than 50 crappie all year! I have probably cleaned about 4,000 crappie so far this year though that were legally caught by licensed anglers. That's about 1% of the potential reproduction of one female crappie in one spawning season.

Adequate habitat is the key to a healthy crappie population. Working with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, other fishing guides and volunteers, I have placed well over 700 Bamboo Crappie Condos in Lake Greeeson in the last three and a half years.

Nuff said?

And one Heck of a good guide too----and helps replenish crappie stock in the lake too

[Jerry Blake]

C'mon Jerry, you know as well as everyone else that out of a clutch of 30,000 eggs only a half of a dozen are lucky enough to make it to maturity.

You place the Crappie condos for job security and to make your job a whole lot easier.

Nuff said?

You are correct - if I wasn't guiding I wouldn't be spending several weeks each year putting habitat in the lake.

You are also correct in that very few newly hatched crappie survive to maturity - with little or no cover for crappie (and many of their food sources) to hide in. However, the more cover that IS available for hatch-lings, fry, young-of-the-year, dinks, eaters, slabs and good-ole-biguns to hide and feed in, the better chances they all have of surviving and the faster they grow.

I've been putting cover in Lake Greeson for over 25-years - 15-years before I started guiding. The size and numbers of bass, crappie and bream are better right now than they have been since I started fishing the lake and "Old-timers" that have fished the lake for decades say it's in better shape than they've ever seen it. There's been a MAJOR improvement in size and numbers of crappie in the last 3-years since we've been adding habitat in large quantities - habitat that would not have been put in the lake if I wasn't guiding there.

So if:
my guiding = a major increase in habitat
and a major increase in habitat = a healthier fish population
then my guiding = a healthier fish population

Sorta makes a statement like, "The main predator for Crappie is Crappie Guides!" sound rather ignorant doesn't it?

There is a BIG difference between a Fish Attractor and Fish Habitat. A Fish Attractor makes it easier for anglers to locate and catch fish and can be made from almost anything that fish can relate to.

Fish Habitat provides cover (a place to hide and feed) for crappie of all sizes from hatch-lings to hawgs as well as cover for their food sources and in the long run makes fishing better for everyone. Fish Habitat has both dense areas for small crappie to hide in as well as open areas for larger crappie to conceal themselves in - not only to hide from predators but also to ambush their prey from.