Keeping Crappie during Spawn thoughts.

[hnd]

around here in nw illinois, it seems not enough people are keeping crappies over the years. therefore, we have overpopulated bodies of water where you are catching 20-30 crappies before you find a non stunted dink that may be over 9".

we release crappies over 14" but keep all 8-13" ers. the guys at work love them and we'll have fish frys at work every month or so.

[throwback]

[QUOTE=crappiepappy;1821004]throwback ... depending on what other fish are present in these lakes, you may be hurting the Crappie by catching & keeping the larger Bass. They may be the top predator, and as such are helping keep the Crappie numbers in check ... which keeps the Crappie from overpopulating & becoming stunted. I would put a minimum size limit on the Bass I kept, at say nothing over 14" kept.
/QUOTE]

Good point. Most of the bass are pretty small though, 12" and under. There are some lunkers in there as well (over 10 lbs). I haven't kept any of the larger bass b/c they are not as good to eat as the smaller ones. I'll make sure to leave the bigger ones in there. Thanks.

[Bronson]

Seems like this came up last year. I defer to P. Rister, the wildlife biologist who said we weren't hurting crappie by taking some to eat. He even mentioned the bigger females weren't as productive as younger fish. Some people seem to think they have superior genetics and that might be true for some. I'm inclined to believe most of our crappie in our healthy lakes will get huge if they live long enough.

At the same time, I've thrown back some good ones, especially when it's not enough to make a meal. Don't believe in killing anything that I'm not going to use. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm finding the older I get, the harder it is for me to kill anything. I still do it, but it's because I love to deer hunt & eating venizon. I love crappie & good bluegill & shellcracker too. There a lot of fun and great on the plate. I just try to make sure they don't have to suffer anymore than they have too.