I personally like the idea of upping the length to 10" to get a little more size. As far as spider rigging and more fish being caught I know MDC does keep track of the population by shocking fish every year and from my understanding the crappie population in Truman is good. The nice thing about crappie are they are prolific spawners and it's not hard to get the population up if it does go down if you have a good spawn. Definitely something to keep an eye on.