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Still seeing a lot of crappie with eggs and have seen several posts stating the same thing. Any chance these females will still be able to spawn and have a successful hatch? I was thinking with all the high water we had in Kentucky this year, it was already going to be a good year, now I'm wondering if it has a good chance of being a great year.
Mr. Prister, wildlife biologist opinion would be a big help.
The Crappie should be done spawning for this year. They will still have some eggs left in them but will be in small sack or loose idepending on where there are location wise. Here they still have some eggs in the sack yet but further South they are probably not in a sack. EB
I'm of the impression that the Ky Crappie spawn 2011 won't be "great" OR "good", but more likely to fall into the "poor" catagory. The reason I say that, is because even with some fish having dropped all or part of their eggs, the rapid rise/fall of water levels was probably devastating to a large percentage of those nests. There just didn't seem to be any lengthy period of time, where the conditions were stable enough to allow for the spawning process & fry development to take place.
The fish are going to "try" & spawn ... even in the narrow windows of opportunity provided to them by the weather/water condtions. The fact that there are still eggs in fish, here in the middle of June, lends me to believe that a lot of those fish never participated in the spawn, or possibly were interrupted during their attempts. The size of the egg sac would testify to that ... with any sac larger than a pinky finger nail being "leftovers" from the Spring spawn attempt. IMHO - it's still way too early in the year for "next years" egg sacs to be forming, or of any appreciable size. That being the case, it would appear that any egg sacs present, now, would likely be the remains of a missed or interrupted spawn.
And, with water temps being what they are now, as well as it being this late in the year ... spawns that take place will likely not produce survivable offspring. The fry may not be able to get to a size that can survive the Winter, in the timeframe left.
This years weather & flood conditions will likely be the cause of a hole in the year classes of most of our lakes. Not all of our lakes were affected, but overall it could be considered as a poor year for recruitment. Years like this are why we have missing year classes, lower levels of overall numbers of fish, & a situation where three years down the road we'll see some lakes having numbers of large fish & very small fish ... with "keeper size" numbers being very low, to nonexistant. A prime example of the misnomer we refer to as the "cyclic" nature of Crappie. They're not cyclic ... they want to spawn & propagate their species. The weather/water conditions are what's "cyclic", and/or the cause of these holes in the spawning cycle.
It's just what "I" think ... and I retain the right to be absolutely & totally wrong Doh
... cp :cool:
Actually I caught several black males last weekend and several large females exploding with eggs in NWArkansas. Darndest thing I've ever seen.
I caught some here with the water temps 90° still loaded with eggs. Been a strange crappie and bream year so far!
In 85 degree water in southern Indiana,,,same here,,still catching females with large egg sacks in them ready to spawn,,in about 10 to 17ft of water and quite a few females with the tiny egg sacks in them as well..last weekend, on sunday,,only 3 males rest were females and everyone of them still had eggs in them,,off Patoka Res. in southern Indiana.