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MS Crappie Limit Reduced Due to Livescope

rsimms

rsimms

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Mississippi has reduced the creel limit on it's best crappie lakes (Grenada, Sardis, Enid and Arkabutla) - going from a 15/person daily creel limit (12-inch minimum) to 10/person - and reducing the daily boat limit from 40 to 25. Mississippi biologists say forward-facing sonar (Livescope) is THE reason for the reduction. One biologist said anglers using the new technology were catching two to three times more fish than those that did not.

Of course this opinion/revelation will create some shock waves across the country, especially in crappie-fishing circles. I'll be writing about it in the upcoming July issue of CrappieNOW Magazine.

I want to hear opinions and/or reactions to this please (for the record, potentially used in print). Remember, your opinions have more credibility if attached to your REAL name, not an anonymous screen name. Thanks.
 
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In general, I think most anglers prefer CATCHING fish over KEEPING fish. And with many fish species, the most important breeders making new fish are the largest females due to producing so many more eggs per spawn than smaller females.

If the population in a body of water is declining due to overfishing, reducing the limit from 15 fish to 12 fish won't make a hill of beans difference... the population will continue to decline, and anglers will catch fewer fish, and those kept will continue to he the largest breeders.

I would think a slot limit in addition to a numbers reduction would be the way to go.... for example, 10 fish from 11 to 14 inches, with only 1 over 14 inches would be a better way to reverse a declining population, while still allowing folks to take enough home for supper as well as the occasional huge breeder for a trophy. But I'm not a crappie biologist, so admittedly I don't know if this would overcome the effectiveness of livescoping that has caused the population decline.
 
its 10/person not 12 according to the article.

what a lot of folks dont understand about crappie is that you want to protect those smaller fish. those are the breeder stocks since they will continue to be in the system longer. those larger "trophy" fish that everyone throws back is a dead fish swimming, pretty much end of life at that size.

bluegill on the other hand takes 7-10 years to grow a 8-10" bull and people hammer those fish to death with perspective view. once you remove those size fish from the colonies, one of two things will happen, theyll stunt since the smaller fish can become more mature or it will take 5 years before those larger fish are replenished.

doug wynnn asked 5 or so years ago, "where have all the bluegill beds gone on ky lake?" well its not the carp, but the old timey notion of keeping the bulls and releasing the piss ants.

in my opinion, they cant ban or outlaw it without fear of it ending up in the courts, and that is where it will end up. i predict it wont be long, if folks dont become more conservationist minded, that it will affect the other species that most folks dont keep, ie black bass.

once the hole buzzards and pot lickers cant find fish any more then theyll move on to species that is more plentiful and just as easy to catch.
 
I have a place at Sardis, keep my boat there, and do 99% of my fishing there or at Enid. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of this situation. These two lakes are experiencing the perfect storm. That storm has four components:

1) Guides. These lakes are now covered up with guides and they are dang good at what they do. A guide will take out two clients in the morning, haul out thirty crappie over twelve inches, drop those clients off, pick up two more clients, and haul out thirty more crappie that afternoon. Multiply that by dozens of guides on the lake, seven days a week, year round, and the fish are being decimated.

2) Livescope. Anglers are more efficient using livescope. They can target the big fish and skip over the small ones. The anglers that have mastered both livescope and boat control can put fish in the boat at a rapid pace.

3) No Arkabutla. It just makes sense that the anglers that fished Arkabutla regularly had to go somewhere once it was drained. It's a fair assumption that most of them ended up at Sardis or Enid. Losing one of the "Big 4" naturally shifted more pressure to the other three and Grenada is a much longer drive from Arkabutla.

4) Pure old fashioned greed. Most crappie anglers I know will not, under any circumstance, throw back a legal crappie if they don't have their limit. It doesn't matter if their freezer is so full of crappie that they can't get the door shut. They are keeping that fish. If you tell them you were fun fishing, didn't bring a cooler, and released all your fish they think you need to be rushed to the nervous hospital.

I fully support the new regulations. Let's face it, a limit of ten crappie over twelve inches will feed most families. That is a good mess of fish. We have to protect the fishery.

We are already seeing some interesting things at Sardis. Fishing pressure has dwindled over the last few months as keepers have been harder and harder to come by. Where you once could sit in one place and scan around and see multiple big fish, now you have to constantly be on the move hunting them. The lake is full of small crappie, but the 12+ inchers are few and far between. It seems the pressure has shifted to Enid. There aren't nearly as many guides at Sardis now. The majority have moved to Enid. What happens when the keepers become scarce there as well? Eventually you run out of places to go.

These new regulations will help a lot, however, they have to be enforced. Unfortunately, there just aren't enough game wardens to cover all the different boat ramps. I use a popular boat ramp at Sardis and the closest ramp to I-55 at Enid and I am almost never checked. Interestingly, I got checked at Arkabutla regularly before it was drained.

Yes, livescope has made it possible for anglers to catch more crappie than ever before, but the real problem is human greed. If everyone would just take what they need and release the rest we would be swimming in big crappie. No pun intended.
 
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megalomaniac said:
In general, I think most anglers prefer CATCHING fish over KEEPING fish. And with many fish species, the most important breeders making new fish are the largest females due to producing so many more eggs per spawn than smaller females.

If the population in a body of water is declining due to overfishing, reducing the limit from 15 fish to 12 fish won't make a hill of beans difference... the population will continue to decline, and anglers will catch fewer fish, and those kept will continue to he the largest breeders.

I would think a slot limit in addition to a numbers reduction would be the way to go.... for example, 10 fish from 11 to 14 inches, with only 1 over 14 inches would be a better way to reverse a declining population, while still allowing folks to take enough home for supper as well as the occasional huge breeder for a trophy. But I'm not a crappie biologist, so admittedly I don't know if this would overcome the effectiveness of livescoping that has caused the population decline.
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I have read that the reason Mississippi set the minimum length at 12" is that your best breeder crappie are 10-12" and they wanted to protect those fish.
 
WTM said:
what a lot of folks dont understand about crappie is that you want to protect those smaller fish. those are the breeder stocks since they will continue to be in the system longer. those larger "trophy" fish that everyone throws back is a dead fish swimming, pretty much end of life at that size.
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There is a group of guides at Sardis, Enid, and Grenada that encourage everyone to release every fish they catch over 2 pounds. It became a fad and gained some momentum, but you are correct. Those fish are near the end of their lives and the 10-12 inchers are the prolific spawners.
 
I'd always thought that the bigger the fish the more eggs it would lay. Years ago while working as a deck hand on a Halibut boat in Alaska a biologist told us that the big fish are the grandmothers and as such are not as fertile as the young (teenagers) in this case the 8-10 inch crappie. I'm all for raising the size limit to 12 inches
 
Ive never fished any of those lakes but i know they are popular crappie destinations. I fully expect a lower limit and increase size limit coming to all popular crappie lakes. I use forward facing sonar and will admit, i wouldnt catch nothing but bass and bluegill without it.
 
chimneyman said:
I'd always thought that the bigger the fish the more eggs it would lay. Years ago while working as a deck hand on a Halibut boat in Alaska a biologist told us that the big fish are the grandmothers and as such are not as fertile as the young (teenagers) in this case the 8-10 inch crappie. I'm all for raising the size limit to 12 inches
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If im not mistaken Grenada is already 12 ". Luckily the repro rate of crappie is insanely fast
 
megalomaniac said:
Thanks for the insight WTM and Spur, makes sense to remove the largest fish since they don't produce offspring as well as the smaller fish. In that case, why not also raise the size limit to 13 or 14 inches?
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its a factor of time. crappie mortality is very high in most lakes, whether it be natural mortality or catch rates. a 14-15" crappie is going to be 5-7 years old with 7 years being about max most of the time. it takes 2 years to grow a 10" crappie and that equates to 5 spawning seasons if released vs maybe 1 season left on a large fish.

the weird thing is that a 12" length limit works wonderfully in those MS lakes but will not work in KY lake. the research at Tn Tech suggests that it would actually hurt recruitment and even in some creeks of the lake a 9" limit would be better, but enforcement would he impossible.
 
WTM said:
its a factor of time. crappie mortality is very high in most lakes, whether it be natural mortality or catch rates. a 14-15" crappie is going to be 5-7 years old with 7 years being about max most of the time. it takes 2 years to grow a 10" crappie and that equates to 5 spawning seasons if released vs maybe 1 season left on a large fish.

the weird thing is that a 12" length limit works wonderfully in those MS lakes but will not work in KY lake. the research at Tn Tech suggests that it would actually hurt recruitment and even in some creeks of the lake a 9" limit would be better, but enforcement would he impossible.
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It is due to productivity of the soil and water. In those hot MS lakes, a crappie grows to be 12-inches long in the same amount of time it takes crappie to reach 10-inches in the Tennessee River. But both fish are going to be about 3 years old.
 

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