Thread: New Rules and Regs for 2015

Originally Posted by bigarm

Make it state wide on the crappie size. If it is good for one lake wouldn't it be a good for most other lakes?

last summer I had a CO,at Patoka, check me and he told me that we should keep ANY crappie we catch regardless of size, if they're too small throw them out because there is too many and they're not growing.

nice reads... I'm all for promoting Indiana crappie & what's best for crappie. This discussion comes up each season. There's some good contributions & scientific results in another earlier thread- it's a "sticky" at the top of the IN Forum. I believe the title is "Size Limits" or something like that. It seemed the one factor that influenced proposed regulation in IN was our northern location in regards to crappie size/growth season in comparison to the southern states.

If over-harvest is identified as the root cause, then that's a horse of a different color. Over-harvest can't be cured by size limits- only enforcement of limits. The over-harvesters are counting on escaping without being caught, so the crappie's size makes little difference whether they are within the legal size limits.

It's kinda like the debate on gun laws (and other things)- more laws can be made, but when no one follows them and there's no enforcement of the laws... guess what happens???

A crappie less than 9" isn't worth cleaning anyway. As far as the panfish total. Should have done this long ago. I've watched many great panfish lakes take a dive. Catching 100 big gills in a day while on the nest is nothing. And in the long run that hurts. As far as Patoka, it holds good fish, but they are way smarter than me. I don't think that lake will ever recover from the runts running wild in there.

i agree that the 9" min. on craps should be state wide. not enough meat on them under 9" anyhow.

the bluegill limit is useless, IMO. i have seen them on beds 4 different times, throughout the year, some years. plenty of recruitment there. there are lakes around here that have given up buckets of gills, all year long, for as long as i can remember. they still produce to his day just fine. i dont know why they would even consider such a reg.

let them go and they will have everything as screwed up as the deer herds are now! the herds around here are well below half what they were 4 years ago.

lets see them shut down the trophy catfish raping, from the pay pit IDIOTS, if they want to do something good.

also said, they need to enforce the regs we have. just not enough money to pay more COs. i hardly ever see any greenies out and about. regs dont mean a thing to the ones over harvesting already!

I think it is hard to make a state wide regulation on crappie. What will work for one lake will not work for another. Some people fish for numbers and other people like to go out and catch slabs. I think the best state wide reg. would be keep all you want to filet under 9in but only allow 12 over 9in. To me 12 fish over 9 is plenty for a good meal and most of those guys will be out again the next day to catch 12 more. I think not keeping anything under 9 will just leave a lake full of smaller fish. I think it is kind of funny that people want to catch bigger crappie but they dont want limits on bigger fish.

if you make a 9" limit on a lake that is over populated then you'll be lucky to find any over 9"

I'd like to see the 25 limit on Sun fish but wonder how that would effect the size of fish on some lakes after some years go by. After all Sun fish are terrible about quickly over populating and stunting in size.