Where have I heard THAT before?!
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Honestly I'm not very optimistic about the prospects of any urban reservoir the size size of Smithville being a great crappie fishing opportunity. Maybe I'm a pessimist by nature but based on comments by the biologist I feel we are trapped in a 20th century paradigm in 21st century. While catch and release worked for bass fishing the tendency of crappie to over populate and the demand for consumption are complications we don't have answers for.
Are the new regs a done thing or could something prevent them from being implemented in March 2019?
I expect this to be approved by the Regulations Committee and our Commission. I haven't heard if that has occurred yet though. It will then be posted on the Secretary of State's webpage for public comments. The earliest it would go into effect would be March 1, 2019.
Ideally under this regulation folks will release the under 9" white crappie and concentrate harvest on the black crappie. The purpose is to remove slow growing fish. Those are the black crappie. There is quite a bit more meat on the shorter blacks than there is on the shorter whites so hopefully that will encourage people to keep the blacks and turn back the whites under 9".
I will keep a few blacks under 9" to do my part but I'm too lazy to clean 30 :-)