Thread: Listen up .... FYI

A longer size limit on Crappie may only be appropriate where there is a healthy but somewhat limited population. It is all very complicated but emotionally high length requirements appeal to me. The lake I fish for example has a 15 inch minimum for Walleye and it makes me shake my head. Who keeps a walleye under 18 inches which is still a pretty small fish. On a lot of lakes a Crappie slot limit seems appropriate but I have never seen one?

Changes mean nothing with no enforcement in place.

With all due respect i know Paul Rister, i have spoken with members of the Ky. Dept. of fish and wildlife about this matter, i also attended a meeting that the dept. held a few years ago and they stood in front of the crowd and talked about how people would have to be patient with the crappie fishing and the numbers were way down and would be a lot better in a couple years, i caught more fish that spring than i ever have in my life, culling fish and catching up to 200 total per day, obviously i only kept the legal number, guess what, 2 years later when the fishing was supposed to get a lot better, it was hard to scratch out a limit . My point is i truly do not think they have a clue what we got, although i do know that when you combine the people catching way beyond there limits, all the modern equipment we are all fishing with, and warden enforcement basically non-existent its a recipe for disaster for crappie fishermen. I agree with Band Chaser with the 11 inch size limit, this past winter there was a huge school of fish that moved into jonathan, they was hammered to the point of no good ones left, i cannot prove this but would bet 60 percent of the fish taken was 10 inches, just thinking how good it would be if all these fish were able to spawn another year. Its an absolute shame that we live here within minutes of one of the 2 greatest lakes in the country and have to drive 4 hours to catch good fish, but i will say this, in Mississippi they listen to the fishermen and i promise you when you pull up the ramp there sits 3 wardens checking every boat every day.

I agree that something needs to.be done. I fish Mississippi a lot and you will be checked at the ramp. There are so many double and triple limits that left the boat ramp this fall in Jonathan creek. I would love to see a 11" or "12 inch limit I've been told that size won't help but limit numbers will and we haven't seen a change since going to 20 fish. We need to see more people being checked at ramps especially in peek times. Like this winter on the school at Jonathan never seen a warden.

co and state and county police are spread WAY TO THIN,theres just not enough to go around ..IMO

I agree that more enforcement would be helpful. I'm sure a lot of sublegal crappie are caught. I would disagree with the idea that f and w don't know what's going on with the crappie fishery. The successful crappie fishing we had this spring and winter was predicted well in advance due to the strong year class of 2014. There are also many fish in the lake from the 2015 year class which was average or slightly above average. This is backed up by our creel survey data as well.

As for years when the fish seem to all be short, this is a function of year class strength. For example, 2015 and 2016 were both years with a lot of short fish and some very large fish being caught. The same thing was observed in 2012 when everyone caught boatloads of 9" fish. During this past spring (2017) there were many more 10 -11 inch fish being caught. This is all a product of a very strong 2014 year class. It just takes time for these fish to grow up and not every year is a good spawn.
In an effort to better understand the factors which lead to a good spawn, we began collecting weekly samples of larval crappie in Jonathan creek during the spawn for the past 3 years. Some of you guys have probably seen us out there. Using that data we can estimate how many crappie were hatched on the daily level in that embayment. We also collect daily hatch information in blood river. Those data can then be compared to environmental variables such as flow and temperature. It also gives us the earliest possible prediction of the crappie spawn and future fishing. We still need another year or two to determine how precise our larval samples are, but the early results have been good. I still have a few of this years samples to go through, but it looks like 2017 might have been a decent spawn. 2016 on the other hand was probably a pretty poor spawn.
We are also very excited about having a full time creel survey now, because we know we have been missing a lot of the early crappie fishing in the winter during warmer years. If you see our creel clerk out there, ask him for an angler attitude survey and you can get your regulation change recommendations in writing.

We talk with biologists from other states regularly to see what their anglers are seeing and to keep up with current trends of crappie fishing nationwide. The mississippi lakes you're talking about are great and their fish have really good growth, but even they have down years due to spawning success variation from year to year. Their growth rates are higher than ours which allows them to use those regs. It's much more complicated than this, but the general rule of thumb is to set the length limit as the size of the crappie when they are age 3. Ideally for us we would set the length limit at 11 for whites and 9.5 for blacks. This would be very difficult to enforce since many anglers can't tell the difference and they hybridize naturally.

It may seem like you guys are being ignored by f and w sometimes, but I can assure you that isn't the case. I very much enjoy talking with crappie anglers about our fishery and we are interested in knowing what our anglers think about our regs, habitat work, access sites, etc. This is why I'm happy to discuss this on a weekend in my free time. This is one of my favorite research topics because it's so complicated.

Originally Posted by Amartinbio

We are also very excited about having a full time creel survey now, because we know we have been missing a lot of the early crappie fishing in the winter during warmer years. If you see our creel clerk out there, ask him for an angler attitude survey and you can get your regulation change recommendations in writing.

I meet the young man last week in Sledd. He was extremely nice and I enjoyed talking with him.

Education is better than enforcement. Most people respond better to social censure than a police state. Think prohibition vs the campaign against smoking. Don't encourage the resource hogs by not engaging in satire.

I fished Jonathan Creek all winter long, and had some of the best fishing in many many years. We decided in sprig of 2016 to only keep fish 11" or bigger, and I'm here to tell ya that it can be done. I have logs of every trip on the water since 2008, so I have the data as well. I agree with some of the growth rates, but the mortality especially natural is where I tend to disbelieve. That many fish just can't die off, we as sportsman and all the folks on the water daily would see it as well.
Enforcement is needed. The attitude has to be like fishing in Mississippi, that there is likely a game warden at the ramp, and at 100.00 per fish it's just not worth it. We need that thought process. I know people were violating all winter long, and zero enforcement.
The Asian carp is a problem, period. We as sportsman are a problem as well. The violators need to be held accountable. And the state needs to step up and own the issues that they can control and let's get this fixed.
I still don't understand you said black crappie would be a 9.5" minimum......why?
We catch alot of really good black crappie, and they meet our minimum or they are released....

I'm pretty sure they enacted the 10 on taylorsville, but not positive. I honestly haven't seen their growth data, but I'm curious and will look it up when I get a chance.

Black crappie would be ideally at 9.5 because that's when the yield (pounds of filets) is maximized. If it's lower than 9.5 those fish don't reach their full growth potential. Longer than 9.5 and you start to lose more to natural mortality. Growth for both species slows after age 3. Those 16 inch fish are ancient in fish years.

These fish do die naturally, some are eaten, some die of old age. Not all fish float when they die. We don't have data on our lake from a time before crappie fishing, but this has been tested in multiple other systems. An old crappie in our lakes is 6 years old. And old bass by comparison is 12.