Originally Posted by
Moveon
That's interesting and is what I heard from one of the fishery people at IDNR somewhere. When you have so many crappies and they have very slow growth rates it means that there is not enough food to feed them all. If you can't give them more food then thin them out. The Gizzard shad are only small enough for the smaller crappie to eat for a short period of time. And the Gizzard Shad grow too big for the smaller crappie to eat. The smaller crappie starts out on small insect aquatic and terrestrial and then eat smaller fry and minnows. Evidently, Patoka Lake doesn't have enough food for these crappies to grow bigger You have to wade through a lot of 7 to 8-inch long crappie before you can find the bigger ones.
when I had a small garden pond the people at the pond store told me if I wanted my fish to grow to their full size to change the water by about 1/3rd every year. Said the fish emit some kind of enzyme that will stunt their growth. I wonder if that could have anything to do with small fish also. I know there's flow in a lake but still I wonder about it.
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