Small fish epidemic

[Kywareagle]

Need some opinions and tactics from some better fisherman than us. Seems like every time we go out we find fish, but it always seems like we find the heck out of small whites. That bein said, when you guys find that you're catchin shorts, what's your next move? Deeper? Shallower? Deeper into creeks/coves? Out to open water? We're stumped. Example this mornin water was 51 degrees, dingy. No hits on brush so we began long lining 10ft deep in about 18-20 fow and short fish after short fish???

[johndeere5045]

We eliminate some of the short fish by using bigger baits. Crankbaits or put a big minnow on your jig while long lining. It won't stop all short fish but slows them down. I've always had the mentality of big bait = big fish.

[Kywareagle]

Yea that's somethin we had considered. This mornin the issue was that every fish we caught was short. Not one legal fish and we began wonderin if bigger fish might have been found had we moved our baits up or down or fishin a different water depth. Our first thought was possibly the blacks may have been up deeper in the creek in shallower water so we tried that without a single bite. Then we tried out deeper with zero success. We went both faster and slower and let out more line and less. All of which yielded nothin but shorts. Hopin maybe someone had some insight in what they do when havin similar outcomes?

[DockShootinJack]

I have found larger fish under the smaller ones most of the time.

[whiskerwhipper]

Might be the lake's fault. Change in population,stunting, etc.

[NIMROD]

Some lakes are over populated with dinks and not many good ones where they get stunted ?Do you know if others having same problem ?

[Kywareagle]

This mornin was actually my home lake where I have caught my limit many times, and a lot of times with little or no short fish. So I know there are plenty of good fish in the lake. My main concern is on days like today where we go out and start executing our game plan per say, and start runnin into short fish after short fish. I don't mind weedin through a few for some slabs but it was just constant today. Wanted to see what people done when faced with similar instances. Like if the location of the shorts told em anything about where to target the larger fish. We had a similar issue Saturday on a lake we were fishing for the first time, shorts and shorts and more shorts. An low and behold before the day was up we ended up findin some keeper blacks. What seemed odd was the number of short fish we caught after findin the larger ones decreased ALOT. Which got me wonderin if there was somethin to it possibly. Why we seemed to catch shorts together and then keepers together. Then today happened and granted we didn't have loads of extra time to try a whole lot of different stuff but still one would think we could pull in one keeper.

[Kywareagle]

I have found larger fish under the smaller ones most of the time.

Will try that next time I have this problem. Thanks

[NIMROD]

Here when spring time moves them to spawning areas or stage'n areas the big ones sometimes run the little ones away and fish can be bunched by size.

[Zippy]

We had been catching small fish all winter and using small baits (under an inch). A fellow crappie.com member was getting some really nice fish in the same water using large baits so we took his advice and changed our tactics. Went from one inch tubes to 2 inch fin S and starting picking up larger fish. Funny thing was we still got the small ones just more large ones thrown in the mix.