short day on the water... pics w/ a question

[randybenham]

I woke up this morning & got out on the water before 6 am to try to catch some lunch. Here is a scene on the lake with a few ducklings swimming around.



I started off using some of skip's thump it jigs & caught 3 crappie right off the bat in 10 minutes. I was jig pole tightlining a kiptail jig tipped w/ crappie nibbles. That pattern worked well for about an hour, catching a few crappie, one decent bluegill, and even a small bass. That pattern slowed down, so I tried a couple of different colors, plastic minnows, etc, without much luck. I switched over to the arkie jig mayfly panfish creature in green red flake, & caught quite a few small guys with it, with a couple of bigger gills also.




I wound up with a decent mess, around 15 or so, & we had them for lunch. Here is a pic of the mess, about half n half, gills to crappie.



The question that I have for the guru's is with regard to the size of the fish here on our lake. It's an arkansas river oxbow, 200 acres or so, with a very good algae bloom. water is real fertilized, great pea green hue to it. This spring we've had a very good size ratio on bluegill and bass, but the crappie have been considerably shorter that in recent past. I called the ar. game & fish to ask about doing a creel survey, and they didn't seem real interested, but asked about the harvest results. I told them this same info on algae bloom & size of other species, & they seem to think we have a lot of stunted crappie, & he recommended limiting bass harvest while getting all the crappie we can out of the lake. What do you guys think?

[Spiderman]

You didn't mention whether the lake is public or private. Regardless, if there isn't very many people fishing for crappie, they can out produce the lake and they will all be stunted. You may think about adding some threadfin shad, possibly on a yearly basis. If a good renewing food source is available and cover you can grow allot of big crappie in a 200 acre lake. Most "private" trophy bass lakes aren't 200 acres.

[CrappiePappy]

that you should follow. Leave the bigger predators be, and concentrate on removing the Crappie & Gills. If they're stunting from overpopulation, then you will be doing your part to thin the herd, the end result of which may be a size increase.
If this oxbow is flooded, on occasion, it may not make any difference what you do. Fish will leave & fish will be added, from the flooding. And, 200 acres is a lot of water to try and "thin out" ... when Ma Nature can change the scenario so quickly & easily.
I'd venture to say that there's probably already a population of baitfish, of some sort, so I doubt adding any would really help. If the F&G biologists didn't specifically recommend doing so, I wouldn't attempt it. There may even be regulations against it.

Personally, I'd be happy with the results ... you did what you set out to do (catch some lunch), and in my book it's a successful trip when you accomplish your goal.

... cp

[randybenham]

thanks for the hints. that's kind of what we are planning to do. i think it's good to get a lot of thoughts on it. spiderman, our lake is sort of private, it has a private launch, so in my opinion it is underharvested. it also has threadfin shad as well as gizzard shad in it. I just know when we moved here, the crappie were signifigantly bigger than they are now. we've lived here for 5 yrs. we'll just try to keep them culled down. the benefit is that the bass are nice & big.

[Winger]

It is very likely that they are just overpopulated, which crappie in smaller impoundments are prone to do. Take out as many as you can ... keep every crappie you catch every time you go. Doubtful you can make a real dent, but it can be fun and tasty trying to make that dent

[averie]

that's why it's so hard to keep a healthy crappie population on smaller lakes..they outgrow it quickly, but 200 acres is plenty big. I bet you're bass are somewhat stunted as well. You need to keep EVERYTHING you catch and have a few of your budddies do the same. Like CP said, it's hard to manage 200 acre lake w/ little fishing pleasure and in lake this size w/ bream and crappie you will have a lot of overpopulation.. I have hard enough time doing it on a 10 acre lake, (no crappie) but we do ok and have huge bass and bream in it after years of managing it. I make everyone keep everything under 2lbs on the bass and keep all bream. Twice a year I invite all the young kids and their dads I know to catch everything they can. They pull a lot of bream and small bass out of it. Gotta manage lakes just like you would a deer herd... I will be more than glad to come and help w/ your management efforts...just say the word