A fish population can be decimated by over fiishing but to completely wipe out a population there needs to be other factors at play. Primarily there needs to be something occuring that prevents them from spawning successfully. Does the lake experience large water level fluctuations? Given that the daily limit was 5 crappie, this leads me to believe that there are other things at play here. That is an extremely low daily limit for a fish that can become too numerous quickly in a smaller lake. I'd prefer not to have crappie in any lake less than 1000 acres because they reproduce so much.