Small Crappie Syndrome???

[slabbandit]

Nimrod Lake is a 3500 acre lake constructed in the 1940's. In the 70's it had an incredible amount of monster slab crappie. The natural habitat has all but diminished in the last 20 years but those that put forth the effort to add habitat can still catch quite a few quality fish.
This lake is full of small crappie. In my opinion, it also has a real healthy shad population with plenty in the baitfish size for crappie. I would sure like to hear from a biologist on this but I think that the larger crappie have learned over the years to relate to the creek and river channel edges with the absense of the old buckbrush.
I would like to hear everybody's opinion on this subject.
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CATCH A BIG-UN

[river scum]

my water is very similar to that, and yes im with you. the bigger ones i get are almost always on the channel edge. in spring they will push up into the creeks but not for long.

[gabulldog]

most lakes like that i have seen where the old wood go's away has good grass if it doesnt i would condo the h@@l out of that place it will truely help it in the long run and if your the one droping them you have your own fishing spots
im big into condo's and i belive its not only made my fishing better but my lake as well
and on a side note about condo's use wood and there neaver to big =)

[NoMinners]

I was wondering that about my fishing lake. Does alot of small fish mean they are overpopulated or is the 10 inch size limit too small. We also have a 25 per person a day limit. What gives? I have PLENTY of my own brushpiles, but still catch ALOT of little fish.

[gabulldog]

a ton of small ones can mean alot of things from overpoped to over fished for along time and now coming back if the lake has had that 10 inch rule for many years i would say its overpoped but if you have only had it a year or two give it some time the lake is just coming back

[Crappie Reaper]

I've had that syndrome myself from time to time, only thing it had to do with Crappie was the fact that I was wading while fishing and the water was cold. Thought a turtle climbed into my britches and tried to hide.

[Cane Pole]

We have a similar problem here. In the mid 90's the fish were great in quantity and size. Things have gone downhill since.

Biologists are overpaid bulls@@it artists. They don't know for sure what is really going on. They don't have a clue as to the count of fish taken from the Ky Lake, nor do they have a clue of the natural mortality of the fish. These are two big numbers they seem to overlook (ignore).

More folks are fishing year round here, yet the bi guy says there is no impact. The bi guy says that KY lake peaked out. Why? I believe fished out. We have a 10 in limit.

People round here crying the blues about lowering the creel. They protesting change. Saying what a disasterous impact it would have on the money....

Ah...Greed...

They could lower the creel to 15-20 and increase size to 11- 12 inch here and I wouldn't mind. But that just me. I gonna fish regardless.

I just go with the program.

[NIMROD]

The lake is very old, silted in, and overfished . This is my opinion of the situation. The lake level was raised to accomadate a few old fishermen. They wanted to have more water to flood the buck brush around the shorelines. This killed off the buck brush and as a result increased erosion. We now have next to no shoreline cover at normal water levels.:rolleyes: Also there is folks that I've seen come in cleaning fish with several times the limit. The Crappie some bring in are under 8'' and some not even 6''!:rolleyes: The lake is really loaded with Shad after all this year's high water. Don't understand when a lot of the big slabs look poor ? The 10'' to 14'' Crappie are bulging with Shad too!

[slabbandit]

I really feel that Lake Nimrod has the potential to be an awesome slab crappie fishery again but it's going to take the combined efforts of several dedicated fishermen to make this happen.

[gabulldog]

well the reson they come up with the 10 inch rule for alot of lakes is it takes a crappie 3 years to hit true spawning age and at that age they should be 8 to 10 inches and since we all know you cant get them all they have a chance to spawn
well thats great helps lakes come back from being over fishes if poeple go's by the law that is
to me the down side is after 5 years or so the lakes will be slamed with small fish and there happy with it they dont care if there big as long as there are fish there
something that has help other fish in the past is slot limits but many poeple hate them and would fight them to no end i truely dont care i dont keep the small ones or the big ones for that matter